What's In The Book?
We have attempted to catalog as many programs as possible to save you the time and money of doing it yourself. I always felt that if the world had one idiot like me who was willing to do all the hard work of locating these programs, then the rest of the country could take advantage of the research and would not have to do any of the hard work themselves. This is a lot better than having everyone in the country digging up the programs for themselves.
The book concentrates on the following areas:
- Federal money programs
- State money programs
- County and City money programs
- Nonprofit organizations
We Don't Have It All
It’s impossible for any one publication, database or anything else, to be able to collect everything in the universe on a given subject. I know I'm biased, but I certainly believe that we are the best people in the world for collecting information on government money programs. I also know that we cannot possibly get every single program that is available.
One problem is that programs come and go. Our world is changing every second. It is a big complex society we are living in, and people are making decisions all throughout the day that make subtle or big changes which affect the contents of this book. Budgets keep changing. Priorities keep changing. People keep changing. Offices keep changing.
A bigger problem is that the world of free money is enormous. Preparing a book for a national audience makes us excellent at identifying national and state programs. But truthfully, it is sometimes beyond our capabilities to completely cover all local, county and nonprofit programs. First of all, if we did collect all these programs in the country, you would not be able to pick up the book. There are thousands and thousands of local communities in the United States and each of them can have 5 to 50 programs. Fifty times 5,000 would be 250,000 programs. We would never finish researching.
 You Have To Do A Little Work Too
Our research staff has put in about 7 man-years of work to collect the information in this book. And as you read above, we have left some of the local work for you. Because it is impossible to collect every local program from the thousands of communities available, we want to give you all the best sources for locating these money programs yourself. And we also give you the information for finding any new national and state programs that were not available at the time we were researching the book.
Here's where to go:
Catalog Of Federal Domestic Assistance
Anyone selling you information about federal programs on real estate has to get the information from this source. It’s printed every six months by the federal government, and is the major source of all federal programs. You can do a free search identifying all the federal real estate programs by going on the web to http://www.cfda.gov. The book is also available in almost every public library and for sale from the U.S. Government Printing Office www.gpo.gov
Your State Housing Authority
Every state has offices that provide financing for buying and fixing up homes and for real estate investing. Call your State Capitol Operator located in your state capital, or go to http://www.govengine.com and look for your state housing office for information about all their programs.
Your City and County Governments
Contact your city and county officials. Almost every local jurisdiction has money for housing and real estate. Many have money for closing costs, down payments, repairs and even rental assistance. It will take some effort but it's worth the time. You can also locate your local and county government offices on the web at http://www.govengine.com/localgov/index.html.
Local and National Nonprofit Organizations
There are thousands of nonprofits groups that help homeowners and real estate investors. They can be groups that offer down payment money, closing cost money and even free technical assistance. It may take a considerable amount of time to find them all. Your local library can be of help or your local elected officials listed below. Your Elected Officials
 Your elected representatives are in the business of seeing how they can help you locate money, services or anything else you need. They all have people on their staff whose job it is to help you so you will vote for their boss. This is why politicians are always getting re-elected. If they do a favor for you, you will vote for them forever, no matter what they do.
- You have one congressman and two senators at the federal level. You can contact all three.
- You have more than one elected official in your state capital.
- You also have an elected representative at your city and county level.
Contact them all. They are all getting a government salary to help you and they all have access to different resources. The worst that can happen is that more than one person solves your problem. If you need help finding them go to http://www.govengine.com. Your local public library can also tell you how to contact them.
Other places
Housing Counseling Center Locator, 800-569-4287 or 800-217-6970 or http://www.hud.gov/offices/hsg/sfh/hcc/hcc_home.cfm
For help identifying more money programs, contact the Office of Community Planning and Development at 800-998-9999 or http://www.comcon.org.
Another good starting place to get free help identifying free government programs and services is the Federal Information Center at http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov, or call 1-800-FED-INFO.
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