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Realtors offer to cut their commission to help public workers afford a home
Offer applies to teachers, public service workers
By Oakley Brooks
The housing market in the west valley may have softened in the last year, but that apparently hasn't hardened the hearts of two Saratoga real estate agents.
Recognizing that many local public employees are without adequate housing, Mark Evans and Joe Maguire recently offered to help buyers out by applying their sales commission toward the down payment.
Maguire says the offer applies to all Saratoga teachers, city employees and emergency workers, as well as Los Gatos teachers.
And he and Evans, both of whom work for a Saratoga realty office, are willing to put their commissions toward homes and condominiums anywhere in the region.
With commissions on home sales typically running between 5 and 6 percent of a property's sale price, up to 3 percent could go toward public employees' new homes--with the other half going to selling agents.
Local housing advocates, including members of the Saratoga-based Teacher Housing Initiative, say that service workers will still be challenged to find the other 97 or so percent to pay for a home.
Even with the housing prices dropping down to terra firma after last year's boom, condos still hover in the $400,000 range in Saratoga.
But advocates and school officials believe any contribution toward down payments will help public employees work through some of the financial barriers surrounding home ownership.
"Any time I talk to teachers about buying a home they say, 'How am I ever gonna come up with the down payment?'" said Kevin Skelly, principal of Saratoga High School. "Anything that can help that is good."
Maguire and Evans first made their offer public in late May and so far have had only one bite: from a San Jose police officer who lives in Saratoga and once worked with the sports booster club at Redwood Middle School. The realtors are researching potential houses for the officer.
While the agents have received a handful of inquiries from other service workers, none has requested help in finding a home. Evans attributes some of the reluctance to the typical public skepticism.
"Some people don't believe it's a real offer," said Evans. "We just want to help out; that's it. There's not a hidden motive or agenda."
Maguire says a feature story in the The Saratoga News in late April about the lack of affordable housing for teachers stirred him and Evans to start the assistance program.
He was already aware of the housing issues teachers faced because his wife, Barbara, taught sixth grade at Saratoga's Redwood Middle School for two years before moving to Fisher Middle School in Los Gatos.
The Maguires currently commute to Saratoga and Los Gatos from their home in the Cambrian neighborhood of San Jose.
Evans is in his fifteenth year as a Saratoga resident and realtor.
When the realtors' first made their offer in late May, it only included Saratoga public employees but Maguire says, "I had to go home at night," so he extended it to include his wife's colleagues in Los Gatos.
The original plan also only extended until the end of June. But recognizing that the end of the school year scattered teachers, and communicating with them became more difficult, the agents agreed to a request from the Teacher Housing Initiative to honor the offer through the end of the summer. Maguire and Evans say they may even extend it beyond the beginning of the next school year and possibly into surrounding communities.
Call Joe Maguire and Mark Evans at 408.867.2000. Details about other housing assistance programs for teachers are at http://www.lgsuhsd.org/districtinfomain.htm.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
