The recent shift in our local market has had resounding effects in a linty of different professional sectors. Aside from the obvious real estate agents and sellers feeling the dip, escrow officers and loan officers are also feeling a little pressure now that the volume we experienced over the last three years has dwindled. One adverse effect of our transitioning market is that some lenders and loan officers are choosing to offer different loan types that look great at first glance, but unfortunately almost always come with a catch. I know it's no fun, but your best bet as a buyer is usually the slow road of saving up a downpayment, improving your credit, and using a conventional loan (there's a reason it's called conventional). Recently the state of California introduced a new downpayment assistance program from The California Housing Finance Agency (CalHFA) called, 'Dream For All'. It is aimed to help low to moderate income Californian families by offering a shared appreciation program which can provide up to 20% of the purchase price as a downpayment. Sounds great right? Well being that there's no free lunch in this world of ours, the chickens come home to roost once you sell the house. That's when you have to pay back the original amount that you borrowed, plus 20% of the appreciated value. Depending on the market this could be no big deal, or could present a real issue if the market continues to decline. After reading up on this, my first question was, "What happens if you never sell?". Well, selling the property is not the only thing that will trigger the repayment of the borrowed amount (along with the 20% of appreciated value payment), transferring the property, refinancing, or the expiration of the term will also trigger the repayment requirement. My biggest concern is that CalHFA has not shared any information on exactly what happens if values depreciate, which does seem to be a realistic possibility given the current economic state of our county. I have included a graph of the past thirty years of actual year of year appreciation below. At the end of the day each buyer needs to research what loan is best for them, and decide how much risk they are willing to take on, if any. | 
