Wisely timed to coincide with the renewed housing boom in Silicon Valley, a home buying fair could help turn pipe dreams about home ownership into dreams come true.

In recent months, the Santa Clara County Association of Realtors quickly assembled three dozen real estate professionals, 30 seminars and 60 exhibits for a day-long, free Affordable Housing Fair 2004, all to help dispel fears that the Silicon Valley housing market is moving out of reach.

Potential home buyers are gasping at a median price of single-family homes that's poised to break the $600,000 barrier—if it hasn't already. Official numbers for March won't be in until early April.

"I think a lot of people are dissuaded, thinking houses are too expensive, but this is an opportunity for everyone to come forward and hear from experts who know how to get people into houses. We have to get the public aware of the fact that there are buying opportunities in the market," said Mike Donohoe, broker owner of Silver Creek Financial in San Jose.

Donohoe will speak at the housing fair's Real Estate Roundtable about the financial preparation aspects of home buying. He says potential buyers initially need to know what's on their credit report and how to budget money before they go traipsing through listings of homes for sale.

A buyer's creditworthiness can determine how much a mortgage will cost—more for those with credit dings, less for those with pristine credit—and a journal documenting every penny spent will turn up many personal cost cutting opportunities.

"You can be counseled to improve your credit score. Carry a journal and jot down when you spend money at Starbucks every day, if you hit McDonald's or Carl's Jr twice a week. Add up what that would mean yearly. If you frame home buying in terms of financial choices, you do have choices you can make that will impact your capacity to buy," said Donohoe.

Along with the roundtable, which offers seminars about home buying preparations, the fair includes a Lenders' Corner to discuss lenders' loan programs, credit and credit scoring, money management and the loan application process; a Housing Assistance Programs module

offers information about special government assistance and other specialty loan programs for low to moderate incomes; the Finding A Home section will examine the use of professionals, the Internet and newspaper classifieds to find homes; the Multi-Lingual Education Center provides identical information in Spanish, Chinese and Vietnamese.

"If a buyer walks into any generic bank and has a less than perfect financial situation and the bank sends them away, they'll think they will be turned down everywhere and that's not the case," said Tina Triano-Mentzos, at Morgan Hill-based American Homebuyers Alliance, a nonprofit organization that provides financial assistance and counseling for home buyers.

A single-lender is not the final word in home buying, she says. "The fair is one place they can go and they can get information about many different

programs and talk to many different people," said Triano-Mentzos.

Keynote speaker at a real estate roundtable, Janet Houde, president of Santa Clara County Association of Realtors and an independent real estate broker, will discuss "Myths That Keep You From Buying A Home," to help potential buyers stop procrastinating.

"It's about the cost of waiting," Houde says. Houde says potential home buyers who moan, "I don't have enough money for a down payment,"

"My credit is bad," "Prices will be going down," and other self-deprecating refrains, have not spent time with experienced real estate professionals.

The fair offers a shot-gun approach to doing just that as well as examining numerous home-buying options.

"I knew the spring market was going to be hot, but not on fire and I knew with the drop in interest rates, that more people were getting into the market, so I thought the time was right to do this fair," said Julie Ziemelis, communications director for the real estate association and fair program manager.

The fair will be April 3, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Parkside Hall, 180 Park Ave., San Jose. More details are available online at http://www.sccaor.com/buy_sell/hous_fair.htm or by calling the Santa Clara County Association of Realtors at 408.445.8595.

Real estate writer Broderick Perkins, executive editor of San Jose-based DeadlineNews.Com, writes regularly for
Saratoga News.