Finding Home: How One Local Realtor is Helping People Overcome Barriers to Homeownership

Realtor Angela Martellaro prioritizes people who historically have faced barriers to homeownership.

June is the 22nd annual National Homeownership Month, highlighting the importance of homeownership in promoting the stability and economic well-being of families and communities.

Homeownership is also a year-round focus of LISC Greater Kansas City. Affordable housing preservation and development are at the core of our work. 

Many first-time and first-generation home buyers often face unique barriers, as real estate agent Angela Martellaro knows well. In her 10-year career in real estate, she has helped immigrant and refugee families, many of them from Myanmar, to buy their first homes in Greater Kansas City.

However, Martellaro’s work with refugees started long before she transitioned into real estate.

“While I was in college, I studied refugees and migration and visited refugee camps in Thailand,” she said. Her first job out of college was as an employment specialist at Catholic Charities of Northeast Kansas. 

“I loved my job and my clients, but like all social work jobs, it was very demanding, with low pay and very large caseloads,” she said. 

After a few years, she discovered that, as refugees became established with jobs and homes, they no longer needed the services that social workers typically provide. 

“Clients were bringing in mortgage applications and expressing a desire to buy a house, which was outside of the scope of help we offered,” she said. So Martellaro took a job with a former Catholic Charities colleague who’d become a real estate agent, and in 2014, obtained her own real estate license.  

While homeownership is important for building generational wealth, Martellaro wants people to understand that it also meets a more basic need. Those at median- or high-income levels can generally assume they’ll find housing that at least is safe and livable, she said. “But for folks who are lower income, much of the rental housing that is available is absolutely deplorable. Most folks are not seeing these real conditions.”

She recalled how, on the way to the closing, a client told her that her family was eager to move into their new home – because a raccoon had fallen through their ceiling that morning. Martellaro visited the rental home, and found that the ceiling was riddled with mold, causing the collapse. The father had chased the raccoon out with a broom. The landlord was unresponsive.

As part of her work, Martellaro often meets with people who don’t qualify to buy a home.  Many return a year or two later, and do qualify, having followed her guidance.

“A lot of what I do is educational,” she said. “People will come to me and say, ‘I have $10,000. Is that enough to buy a house?’ I educate them about how it depends on your work history, your credit and what price point you want to be at. It’s giving people a roadmap for what it takes to buy a house.”

Martellaro has developed deep knowledge of the special programs for lower-income, first-time homebuyers. Grants can help cover a down payment or closing costs. Some lenders offer special loans allowing first-time buyers to purchase a house with no money down or to avoid mortgage insurance.

“There's such a wide variety of assistance programs for first-time home buyers,” she said.

Martellaro added that many of her clients are surprised to learn they qualify as low-income, defined as 80% or less of the area's median income. That translates into about $55,000 a year for a single person in Kansas City, Missouri.

“Most people do not want to think of themselves as low income, but when I show them the chart for who qualifies, they say, ‘Wow, that's me and everyone I know,’” she said.

Martellaro served on the board of the Kansas City Community Land Trust, and she’s hopeful about that program’s potential for creating “perpetually affordable housing.”

“With the Community Land Trust model, those subsidies stay with the home,” she said. “Every time that home is sold, it's sold to a low-income buyer at below-market value. We're not just giving huge checks to individual families and then waving goodbye to that subsidy money. We’re creating a more sustainable, affordable housing system.”

Martellaro adds that, while she serves many refugee and immigrant clients, the barriers they face are not unique to them.

“America has a history of intentionally excluding non-white people from home ownership,” she said. “I see what I do as continuing the work that the Civil Rights Movement started, of trying to break down those very intentionally constructed barriers.”