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Better Awards Hardworking Family with Home Giveaway and Launches HOPE Grant to Bolster Home Accessibility

By: Better Home & Finance Holding Company via Business Wire

December 21, 2023 at 09:00 AM EST

The couple received a home to provide a refuge for their family emigrating from Haiti. Through its non-profit affiliate, the Better Opportunity Fund, Better will offer the HOPE Grant to help hopeful homebuyers become homeowners.

This year, Better Home & Finance Holding Company (NASDAQ: BETR, BETRW), a leading digital homeownership company, hosted a home giveaway in the US as part of their mission to make homeownership more accessible for hardworking families. Today, Better announced Alex and Naomie Miller from Cleveland, Ohio as the winners of the Better Home Giveaway. Alex and Naomie were selected from a pool of applicants based on the challenges they’ve faced in their homebuying journey and the impact they’ve had on their communities. As the winners of the Better Home Giveaway, Alex, Naomie, and their son Emerson received a home of their choice and welcomed Naomie’s four siblings who were approved to travel to the United States as refugees under a new visa class established in January 2023.

Naomie grew up in Haiti, where she shared a single room home with nine family members until she was 17. Alex first traveled to Haiti with a medical relief team in 2010 following the devastating earthquake that rocked the country. He briefly went back to the United States to raise money for an ambulance before returning to Haiti to care for his patients and fight the cholera epidemic. Alex and Naomie met while providing aid at a treatment center, where they fell in love and were married in 2013.

During the pandemic, the couple worked at a local hospital, with Alex working as a physician’s assistant and Naomie as a Housekeeper in the ICU. During this time of uncertainty, Alex and Naomie hoped to purchase a home to call their own and provide a sense of security for their family, but they were outbid time and time again. They moved back to Alex’s hometown of Cleveland to be closer to family and hopefully find a more affordable housing market but they still struggled to find available open houses and were faced with the same issue of being outbid.

Naomie’s dream has always been to bring her family to America. Four of Naomie’s siblings were approved to travel to the United States as refugees under a new visa class established in January 2023. Winning the Better Home Giveaway allowed Alex and Naomie to welcome their family with open arms and provide a home where her siblings can adjust to their new lives in the US.

Alex and Naomie come from very different backgrounds, but both have a deep appreciation for the importance of home. However, like many hardworking Americans today, they found the traditional homebuying process incredibly difficult due to factors out of their control. This was a common theme with applicants for the Better Home Giveaway. With the number of available homes falling to record lows and prices skyrocketing, it has become increasingly difficult for everyday Americans to achieve their homeownership dreams.

Hosting the Better Home Giveaway during 2023 was a realization of Better’s mission to make homeownership simpler, faster, and more accessible for hard working Americans. Better plans to build on the success of Home Giveaway through its non-profit affiliate, the Better Opportunity Fund. The Better Opportunity Fund offers the Home Ownership Program for Everyone (HOPE) Grant which allows eligible homeowners to receive 2% of their home purchase price, up to $5,000¹, to be used towards their down payment or closing costs and never has to be paid back. The HOPE Grant is offered in all 50 states and was built to help jumpstart the homeownership journey of those who are financially fit for a mortgage but may have been overlooked by traditional lenders. Eligibility requirements can be found on the Better Opportunity Fund’s website.

About Better Home & Finance Holding Company

Since 2017, Better Home & Finance Holding Company (NASDAQ: BETR) has leveraged its industry-leading technology platform, Tinman™, to fund more than $100 billion in mortgage volume. Tinman™ allows customers to see their rate options in seconds, get pre-approved in minutes, lock in rates and close their loan in as little as three weeks. Better’s mortgage offerings include GSE-conforming mortgage loans, FHA and VA loans, and jumbo mortgage loans. Better launched its “One-Day Mortgage” program in January 2023, which allows eligible customers to “go from click to Commitment Letter” all within 24 hours. From 2019-2022, Better completed approximately $98 billion in mortgage volume and $39 billion in coverage written through its insurance arm, Better Cover. Better was named Best Online Mortgage Lender by Forbes and Best Mortgage Lender for Affordability by WSJ in 2023, and ranked #1 on LinkedIn’s Top Startups List for 2021 and 2020, #1 on Fortune’s Best Small and Medium Workplaces in New York, #15 on CNBC’s Disruptor 50 2020 list, and was listed on Forbes FinTech 50 for 2020. Better serves customers in all 50 US states and the United Kingdom.

For more information, follow @betterdotcom.

¹https://better.com/b/Better-Opportunity-Fund-HOPE-Grant-Terms-and-Conditions