Down payment assistance
Grants and loans can make the difference when it comes to buying a home.
Financial help is available—if you know where to look.
From government grants for first-time homebuyers to special loan rates and incentives offered by local banks, there are many tools to break the downpayment barrier and buy your first home.
It takes the right combination of resources.
The Neighbor Project’s guides are experts in down payment assistance. Because available grants and loans are always changing, if you’re ready to buy a home and need help supplementing your savings, we can work with you to create a plan.
Homebuyer Education unlocks opportunities.
Most households who become homeowners through The Neighbor Project don’t rely on just one tool—it takes a combination.
Programs like Breakthrough Rental can help renting families build savings, while grants and loans from a various source can supplement those savings to make homeownership possible.
When you take our Homebuyer Education course, we work to bundle these direct grants with other resources from state, federal and local programs—often resulting in over $20,000 in down payment assistance.
Many of these tools are only available if you have a Homebuyer Education course certificate. The course is the first step.
From Us, For Us.
The Neighbor Project doesn’t just connect you with grants—we also offer our own.
Since 2023, the Closing the Gap grant has helped Aurora-area institutions to come together to address the racial homeownership gap and promote more equitable distribution of generational wealth. Black homeownership rates in the U.S, are nearly 30 percentage points lower than White rates. Black families often face additional challenges to homeownership. This grant exists to remove them.
Closing the Gap is administered by the Community Foundation of the Fox River Valley. Learn More & Donate here.
Ready to apply?
We explore down payment assistance in one-on-one sessions as part of the Homebuyer Education course. Ready to explore your options with an expert?
Your first step is to enroll.
Sponsor a grant
Closing the Gap is a grant fund from The Neighbor Project, created specifically to help close the gap between Black and White homeownership rates in the Aurora area. To grow its impact, The Neighbor Project will match the first $50,000 donated to this fund.
We need you.
Aurora’s greatest asset is the people who live here. Empower them - and we all prosper.
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