Hispanics make up larger percentage of new homeowners in Delaware

With the growing number of Hispanic residents moving to southern Delaware over the course of the last two decades, many businesses in Sussex County have adapted to the changing landscape in profound and dramatic ways.

Real estate professionals are certainly no exception. With more and more members of this demographic now buying homes and putting down roots in Delaware’s southernmost county, members of the Sussex County Association of Realtors are taking notice.

“Our area has become increasingly diverse in recent years, with more and more Latinos discovering all that Sussex County has to offer,” says Trina Joyner, 2012 president of SCAOR. “It’s important that we, as Realtors, do all we can to make these new residents feel welcome, while also ensuring their ability to achieve the American dream of home ownership.”

In a study conducted recently by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, Hispanics are expected to make up 40 percent of all first-time home buyers over the course of the next two decades. Georgetown, the seat of Sussex County, already boasts the largest percentage of Guatemalan residents of any town in the United States and is poised to be on the leading edge of this new era of home ownership.

The message is simple - this is a demographic that is not going away, and it’s imperative that business professionals, including Realtors, embrace the Hispanic community and all it has to offer.

Says Joyner, “The makeup of our county is changing dramatically, and it’s up to all of us to change with it."

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, approximately 8 percent of Delaware’s population, or 74,000 residents, is Hispanic, a number that has grown significantly in the last quarter century.

That includes a foreign-born population that more than doubled during the 1990s. The increase in the foreign-born population during the 1990s accounted for 19 percent of the state’s overall population increase, a number that does not include the impact of children born to immigrants. In 2012, foreign-born residents now account for 6 percent of the state’s total population.

According to a recent report by the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals, 34 percent of Hispanics said they are likely to buy a home in the next three years, compared to 24 percent of all Americans.

Recognizing this fundamental shift in America’s home-buying landscape, many Realtors throughout the First State, including a good number in Sussex County, have taken up Spanish language classes in recent years as a way to reach out to this growing demographic. Classes are available online, at Delaware Tech in Georgetown and via individual tutors, among other methods.

“While learning Spanish is certainly not essential to our livelihood, anytime we, as Realtors, add a skill set that can further our professional development while also allowing us to give better service to our clients, that’s obviously a good thing,” says Joyner. “There are many newer residents in our area who are more comfortable carrying on a conversation in Spanish, and learning the language, at least at a conversational level, allows us to do a better job as Realtors.”

The Sussex County Association of Realtors was chartered in 1949 and has steadily grown in size, scope and mission during its more than six decades in Sussex County. It is a professional trade association with goals of carrying out a program of education and advocacy for real estate in the county.

To read more about issues related to Sussex County’s real estate industry, go to www.scaor.com.