Opening the door for homeownership
Increasing access for home buyers
In an economy where homeownership is the cornerstone of financial stability, many find themselves locked out without a key. The Urban Institute reveals a staggering wealth gap between homeowners and renters, driven largely by real estate — a gap that has reached unprecedented levels.
According to Bankrate, homeownership can often be a key driver of wealth accumulation. However, this challenge is especially daunting for first-generation homeowners, whose families have never owned a home. Costs like down payments and closing fees are major barriers that cut across all racial and ethnic backgrounds and geographies.
Progressive is passionately committed to breaking down these barriers by equipping individuals with the essential knowledge and resources needed to purchase, maintain, and build wealth through homeownership. We've made it part of our purpose to open the door for aspiring homeowners, fostering financial security for generations to come.
In 2024, we contributed over $7M
Our investments are helping more families purchase, retain, and build a lasting legacy through homeownership. Last year, we partnered with various organizations to lay the foundation for tangible impact. We're not stopping there — we're investing more in 2025 and beyond to greatly expand our efforts and reach even more hopeful homeowners.
Our commitment to first-generation homeowners
Providing the knowledge and resources necessary to purchase, maintain, and build wealth through homeownership. The goal? To foster financial security for generations to come.
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With the wealth gap between homeowners and renters at an all-time high, we're devoted to making homeownership accessible by providing financial resources and educational tools to help first-generation homeowners overcome challenges and achieve their dreams.
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We're committed to empowering homeowners with the resources and support they need to thrive in homeownership, including guidance and education on maintaining and sustaining their investment.
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Support for building wealth through your home
We're dedicated to helping homeowners build wealth and a lasting legacy by providing the resources and financial literacy tools needed to maximize the benefits of homeownership and secure their future.
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Recipe for Homeownership
Join this powerful dinner conversation with Black Thought, Rocsi Diaz, Common, and Dr. Lynn Richardson on the journey from renting to owning. Hear personal stories about homeownership, building generational wealth, and what it takes to navigate and achieve the American dream.
Show video transcript
Welcome to my dinner, where we're gonna uncover some of the secret ingredients to becoming a home buyer and talk about something that's really important to me, creating generational wealth through homeownership. We have this beautiful meal presented to us by Chef Omar Tate of Honeysuckle here in Philadelphia. There's also a secret ingredient. Can any of you guess what the secret ingredient is?
I'm gonna say creativity.
I mean, you can't cook food without putting your foot in it and having love.
Exactly. Love and legacy.
That's what this meal is about. It's about legacy. We're here today courtesy of our friends at Progressive Insurance, and I'm not here alone. I'm also joined by actor, legendary rapper, Academy award-winning artist, and now real estate developer Common.
And I'm also being joined by actor, legendary radio and television host, Emmy award-winning host, model, the beautiful, brilliantly gifted and talented Roxy. We're not alone, Rocsi. Who else we breaking bread with?
No, we're not. Dr. Lynn, this woman right here. Lemme tell you something. She helps me right now trying to create that generational wealth that I knew nothing about. Dr. Lynn is our expert on all money moves that we're gonna be making. Thank you for being here.
Welcome, welcome, welcome.
And we got this food. Y'all hear my stomach cause I'm so hungry.
Speaking of ingredients, Dr. Lynn, what are your, you know, let's say three ingredients for building wealth in homeownership?
Wow. Well, the first ingredient that I would say, and this is so important for everybody to understand, is that everyone has wealth through proper estate planning.
Number two is to take care of that wealth. Just like we take care of our health, we go check our teeth, we go check everything else. We want to check that house. We want to make appropriate upgrades as we go along, so we want to improve the property. We want to put some tender loving care into it, and we want to see that property or that wealth grow over time.
How do renovations work? Like, when you purchase a property, do renovations immediately add value to the place? What would you suggest a new homeowner do, like, right out of the box?
The renovations that will add value relatively quickly are adding a bathroom or bedroom. So, any additions, if you can increase the quantity of something in the house, that's going to be great. Painting, carpet, those kinds of things are always going to add value. And I'm gonna say, I do not want to minimize curb appeal, especially when you've got competing properties in your neighborhood or new development happening in your community. You want your property to look nice. It's also important to know that the value, property value, can decrease.
Oh. Well, what makes the property value go down?
If you don't take the proper assessment, just like a physical exam, you could end up losing your financial health if you are not paying attention. As it relates to appraisals, guess what? Progressive has appraisal tools at progressive.com/openthehouse.
Then I would say the third ingredient is really important, and that is don't fall in love with the walls. Don't fall in love with the walls.
Which it's very difficult not to.
Don't get so attached to it that you ignore the wealth that you've tried to create.
But I think that's something important to say, to not start so big — you could start your investments small.
People are emotional, but money is not.
That's a whole word. People are emotional, but money is not.
I just wrote a song on my head.
Yeah, let's do it. And I'll do a bar or two on there too. But money is not emotional. And so one of the other things that happens to us is we start to get emotional about the investment, the property, and so on and so forth. You're thinking, I want the big dream property. No, you got to live somewhere. And if you're paying rent, you're paying some mortgage. You're just not paying your own.
What was your earliest experience? Like, how old were you when you, you know, discovered the importance of home ownership?
Interestingly enough, I was born and raised in Chicago. My grandmother had an eighth-grade education, still one of the most brilliant people I've ever met. You learn all these things from Big Mama, like wear clean underwear in case you get hit by bus. Why is it hit by a bus? Like, wow. Long story short, I get married young. I was married at the age of 24. My husband and I, our credit was bad, but I got over it. We scraped up the money, like literally our last penny to get into the house. So, we were both first generation home buyers. It was a struggle, but I knew that that's the path that we needed to be on starting a young family. So that's really what I'm passionate about, helping us understand not just how to get the home, but to keep the home and then pass it on for generational wealth and legacy.
Exactly. Common, we've known each other such a long time. I remember when we were young people, you were, you know, one of my friends that I recall having, you know, owned property when we were still kids.
Yeah, we was kids. Yeah, sure.
Yeah. Why was that so important for you as a young person? Like who sort of instilled that within you?
Man, my mother, she was like, she was the one. When I first started rapping, we living check to check, if you don't move your feet, then I don't eat. So we like neck to neck. I wasn't making a lot of money, but my mother was saying, man, you need to save up and invest in a home. Like, look, this will pay off for you later on. But my father too would say, get the land. Get the land. He would just say it in a slick way. The combination of that really drove me, and eventually I bought a building, and I actually created a place, an apartment for me to stay in the basement.
You remember my spot? I felt like I was worth something when I first got that property. Yeah.
Do you still have the same building, your first building that you purchased?
No, no. I actually just sold that one last year.
I didn't want to give it up to be honest, but I was like, it's time. It just was time. I had to pass it on.
And it's good to look at things like that to say, hey, I got out of this what I wanted and now I'm ready to take this and move on to something else.
Which one was your first home?
The first home I purchased was in a suburb outside of Philly called Cheltenham. I didn't know about purchasing a property and putting it into — like creating a trust, for example. Maybe, Dr. Lynn, could you explain? Could you explain it to us?
Yeah, because I want to know more about that.
Homeownership is the foundation for building wealth and because it's a quick appreciation in terms of equity and allows you to use that equity to either move up, you know, start your business, and do other things. When we do proper estate planning, we do something very simple. We create a trust. It's a two- or three-page document. The real estate is listed in the trust, and when you pass on, everything that's listed in that trust passes on to the beneficiary, just like an insurance policy. When there is no estate plan, then the government has an estate plan and it's called probate, and so the property then has to go into probate and all these things have to happen.
That's like a sort of limbo, right?
Yes. Costs lots of money, and then people can contest the property. So, you may be your mother's only child, but if the property is not in a trust passed on through an estate plan, anybody could come up and say they were her anything. They could contest it for any reason, and the only way to get through that process is to sometimes go through years and years and years of probate.
Oh, wow. Well, so if you create a trust, then the property isn't in anyone's name.
When you create a trust, it's in the name of the entity that's created. And then the assets in that trust, most notably the real estate and some other things that you may find of value, they literally pass on with a signature, no probate, no fees. And you're able to then pass on generational wealth.
Yeah. This isn't the sort of thing that's common knowledge though.
They don't teach us that.
So, people say, oh, I have a will. Wills can be contested. Wills have to go through probate. We want to create a sense of urgency around this. Placing the home in a trust can happen at the closing table. You go through the closing table, you sign all these papers, everybody's so happy. There's one extra document to sign.
One more thing to sign. Your estate plan essentially is the business plan for what happens not only after you pass on, but while you're alive.
I have a question for you. Why do you think that everybody thinks when you hear, 'Do a trust,' you know, the paperwork.
It's not a lot of paperwork.
What is the intimidation there for a lot of people to not want to go through the process?
Well, I think it's a step before intimidation. It literally is lack of knowledge. Having the conversation is probably 95% of the battle.
But I do have to say, Dr. Lynn, some of it feels intimidating. They act like you're supposed to know everything.
It seems like by design, right?
So, there's a lot of myths out there. They tell you, if your credit score isn't 800, you can't get a good interest rate. That is false. The person with a zero credit score can get the same rate as someone who has an 800 credit score. There are multiple programs to do that.
What we do is we create a residential mortgage credit report. It's called an RMCR. So, you find what they do pay. Oh, I pay my rent every month. Okay, we take that. I pay my cell phone bill every month, we take that. We take those and add it to the credit report, and now the person has a credit report just like you with your credit card, bank statements, and things like that.
The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary. So, if you're willing to do the work and put it in, then you can get to the success. That's what wealthy cultures do. They embrace conversations around wealth, whether we are successful, whether we are trying to get it together, and even when we fail, they have a dinner meeting like this. They bring everybody to the table, and they say, okay, how are we going to save Rocsi? How are we going to save? And what are we going to do to collaborate to get it to the next level?
And that's why I think it's dope, what Progressive is doing, what you're doing right now, because I'm learning too. But I've had access to people who have way more money than me and they will share information, but I noticed when I'm sitting in the rooms with them, what they talking about, and then they'll be like, yo, you want to get in on this? I want to bring that to more people who don't think that we have the opportunity to do these things.
Some folks feel like it's expensive to establish all of those, you know, all these safeguards, right? It seems like it comes at a great expense.
People pay for what they want. Building wealth and maintaining wealth is work. To whom much is given much is required.
When you think about legacy when it comes to property, where do you see that landing?
Well, I'll jump in on that because me and you talked about that before, you knew that I did an investment property with my brothers, where we all put our names on a mortgage to get a home, not only so that they could stop renting where they were living. Now you're not paying somebody else's mortgage because that's what you're doing when you're renting a home, and we took that opportunity to purchase another property in the family's name. All of our names are on it, and that's our family home, but it's also an investors property. So being able to create generational wealth by families getting together and purchasing a home, putting your credit together to be able to get that loan. Can you talk about that?
Coming together as a family to own real estate and to create an ongoing family legacy. Every other culture does that. My husband and I have been blessed to be married for 30 years. We're not going to start out renting. We're going to start out with ownership and then watch the equity build.
You said the E word, and I'm so excited too, being a homeowner now, to tap into that equity.
And playing with that equity, but I don't even know where to begin. It sounds good when they say it, they say, I want to raise my portfolio. I want my portfolio to be like, what.
I love it. I love it. I love it.
Holding and Holdings, period.
Followed with an S. Multiple, multiple.
Do you have to pay taxes on the money that you pull out from my equity?
No, you don't. So that's the other benefit. You can also get a general home equity loan and just say, I want the cash. In most cases, when you sit with folks who have accumulated massive wealth, they'll tell you a time when they didn't have it, but they kept going and kept going and kept going and kept collaborating, kept connecting, and kept communicating so that they could break through, and they often take calculated, methodical, and well-thought-out risks. So, if they can do it, we can do it.
The value of the property that I told you tripled this worth was an emotional buy for me. I was going through a tough time in my life. I was like, I got to make a step in my life to be better. And like, what would you say to someone who is coming from that perspective? Because I move off emotion.
If it's right, if it's righteous, just put it to the test. Take the idea to two or three financial people that you respect, not that mom and dad and friends aren't going to say the right thing, get their opinion, but also get the opinion of someone who is an expert in that area. The emotional piece can be married with an intellectual plan. So, if the emotion says buy it, but the number say you can't afford it, well, then there's the answer, right. But if the numbers say, well, yes, you can afford it, but maybe you could do something else with this money, then I'm going to say, okay, let's figure out how to do that something else with this property. So, I think it's about definitely not shutting the emotions down, because clearly in this case you were right, which makes you dangerous.
But that's what I'm saying. I'm trying to find my balance, man. When you got your first home, did you know all it took to get into it?
No. All the stuff that I'd have to do upfront was sort of, it was a gray area, but I mean, it'd be great to sort of, you know, to be able to receive all that information in one place. So, like, where does that exist, Dr. Lynn?
The beautiful thing is at progressive.com/open the house, everything that you need to get in a home, stay in a home, and then also preserving and building wealth in that home. So progressive.com/openthehouse has all of those steps, all those upfront things that you need.
I can tell, you know, my family is gonna be thanking you for connecting us.
Well, thanking Progressive for connecting us. I'm gonna keep coming with the questions.
No, this is good, this is how we change it.
So, thank you so much, Dr. Lynn, my new best friend. Thank you, Common. Thank you, Rocsi. It's great to see you all, had such a pleasure. Shout out to our friends at Progressive.
Delivering down payment assistance
$13.5k towards a down payment with the UpPayment program
Talking about solutions is great. Doing something about them is even better. That’s why we launched UpPayment — our down payment assistance program created to help first-generation homebuyers get into homes faster. This year, 100 participants will receive a $13.5k grant toward their down payment — and we're just getting started.
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