Laura Lafayette
CEO of Richmond Association of Realtors and Maggie Walker Community Land Trust Board chairwoman
Photo by Ken Penn
In mid-November, the Maggie Walker Community Land Trust handed over the keys to a new, three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath home in Church Hill to a first-time homeowner. Just four months prior, the city’s first land trust – and only the second in Virginia – broke ground on the first property parcel beneath the home, in an innovative approach to affordable housing.
“The goal of the land trust is to preserve a mixture of incomes in a housing market that’s rapidly seeing a loss of affordability,” says MWCLT board chairwoman Laura Lafayette, who is also chief executive officer of the Richmond Association of Realtors.
The land trust model works by allowing income-qualifying homeowners to purchase only the actual housing structure, because the trust owns the land under the house. When the owner later sells the home, the cost of the land is subtracted from the sale price, and any equity increase is split between the homeowner and the land trust. “One of the ways to build wealth is through home ownership,” Lafayette says, “but you have to be able to afford that step.” She expects at least 10 more MWCLT homeowners by the end of 2018. —Sarah King
