ESSA Bank & Trust Is All in on Accessible Homeownership

With the housing market continuing to favor sellers over buyers, ESSA Bank & Trust in Stroudsburg, Pa., has bridged the gap for those looking to get on the housing ladder. 

The $2.2 billion-asset community bank offers several programs and partnerships specifically serving first-time buyers and low-income and majority-minority communities. 

“We feel like we have really robust products now, and they’re being well received out in our communities,” says Bill Vitalos, ESSA Bank & Trust’s director of consumer lending. “We’re helping a lot of people get into housing.”

Addressing barriers to homeownership

Helping people buy homes has always been a part of 108-year-old ESSA Bank & Trust’s mission, but expanding homeownership means more than ensuring community members have a roof over their heads. Owning a home can benefit families financially for years to come, points out Peter Gray, chief operating officer. 

“Homeownership is often a bridge to generating wealth and transitional wealth [for] people,” he says, “and that’s important to us.” 

To help its customers achieve this, ESSA Bank & Trust has worked to remove barriers and make purchasing a home more attainable for community members. 

For example, down payments and closing costs can feel overwhelming to prospective homebuyers, so the community bank launched a fund to address these obstacles. 

“We created a loan subsidy fund to serve majority-minority census tracts within our lending service area,” says Vitalos. “By having that fund in place, it helps people get into more affordable housing situations and helps them better qualify for mortgages.”

Helpful loan programs

Even as interest rates are coming down, they can still be a barrier for people of low and moderate incomes, especially as house prices continue to rise. 

ESSA Bank & Trust’s Community First Loan Program aims to help. It is available to those in designated majority-minority or low-income neighborhoods and is often used in conjunction with the bank’s loan subsidy fund. According to Vitalos, the Community First Loan Program provides a more generous rate discount on prevailing mortgage rates, and it waives fees and charges associated with mortgage applications. It also provides lender-paid mortgage insurance as needed.

ESSA Bank & Trust’s First-Time Homebuyer Program, a more general offering, “makes the American Dream more affordable,” according to the bank’s website. Program participants benefit from discounted interest rates, reduced private mortgage insurance premiums and waived bank fees. Eligibility is based on income. 

“With our First-Time Homebuyer Program, one thing that sets us apart from other lenders is we allow up to 120% of median household income by county,” Vitalos says. “It allows us to serve more borrowers, and it also works better in today’s marketplace, because housing prices have just gone up so much.”

“We believe in reinvesting in the communities that we serve, and [aiding first-time homebuyers] is one of the ways we can make a tangible impact.”

—Bill Vitalos, ESSA Bank & Trust

Hiring the right people

ESSA Bank & Trust’s programs and partnerships are supplemented with its strategy of hiring professionals who are focused on reaching historically underserved groups. 

“We’ve hired two mortgage professionals to specifically try to target majority-minority census tracts,” says Gray, “and we’ve provided them with the compensation plan and the resources necessary to do that in order to improve the homeownership opportunities within those tracts.”

ESSA Bank & Trust also hired a community development officer with the purpose of increasing homeownership and financial literacy, as well as a Spanish-speaking mortgage professional to improve the community bank’s reach within Hispanic and Latino communities.

“We have some densely located census tracts, specifically in Lehigh Valley, that are predominantly Hispanic and Latino,” explains Gray. 

The power of collaboration

ESSA Bank & Trust has forged several partnerships that further its homeownership mission. 

The community bank partners with the RiseUp Fund, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit that aims to make homeownership possible for underserved families. Together, the two groups provide grants for down payment financial assistance for prospective homebuyers, foreclosure prevention education for current homeowners and general financial literacy programs.

“It really multiplies our power to serve our communities when we work together with other organizations,” says Vitalos.

ESSA Bank & Trust has a long history working with poverty mitigation nonprofit Community Action Lehigh Valley (CALV), which provides financial knowledge to empower homebuyers in one of the community bank’s largest service areas.

“We partnered with [CALV] to provide our professional advice on seminars for first-time homebuyers,” says Gray. “Our mortgage representatives dedicate their time to go speak and educate first-time homebuyers.” The community bank also provides grant money to help CALV offer counseling services to support low-income individuals with severe mental illnesses who are looking to buy a home or secure a rental. 

Adding another layer of support, ESSA Bank & Trust works with financial wellness nonprofit GreenPath Financial Wellness to offer the community bank’s customers live counseling services and online educational resources on a wide range of financial topics. 

The community bank is more than proud to provide such homeownership assistance, says Vitalos: “It’s a major bedrock of what we do. We believe in reinvesting in the communities that we serve, and this is one of the ways we can make a tangible impact.”