Kama Burton provides a safe space for troubled youth in California to express themselves, build camaraderie and chart a more positive path forward in life.

Kama Burton heard that girls were getting into fights at school. The fights were so frequent that they disrupted the school day for most of the students, many of whom came from low-income backgrounds. Some were foster kids; others were caregivers to younger siblings while their parents worked multiple jobs to make ends meet.

School should be a safe haven, thought Burton, AHWD, SFR, C2EX, broker-owner of CMB Realty Services in Moreno Valley, Calif. So, she launched Girls Club through her nonprofit, Loving Me 1st(link is external), to give young girls a safe space to express themselves and connect with each other. Time to themselves without stressful obligations helps them to regroup and consider what they want for their lives, Burton says. She uses inspirational speakers and relationship-building exercises to help instill a sense of self-worth and confidence in Girls Club participants.

“[School] principals found that the number of [violent incidents] decreased, which allowed all students to attend school stress-free,” Burton says of the impact of her program on the community. She adds that Girls Club helps youth “become more aware of who they are” and realize their potential.

Since its inception in 2015, Girls Club has expanded to serve 15 area schools and girls in fourth through 12th grades. It’s also grown in its offerings from an in-school session to conferences, learning sessions and field trips. The events are free for the girls to attend. “This year, we had our 1st Annual Entrepreneurship Conference and our 7th Annual Girls Conference,” Burton says. The theme of this year’s Girls Conference, which drew 225 young participants and their families, was “I Matter.”

Ultimately, Girls Club aims to give a dose of confidence to girls who don’t necessarily realize their potential or what’s possible for them. They need a helping hand from someone who cares and sees their worth, Burton says. She’s seen participants stop fighting with each other and set their sights on helping each other create brighter futures for themselves. Her proudest moment, Burton says, is watching young members of the club grow and go off to college.

Learn more about Burton and other REALTORS® who are doing extraordinary things to give back to their communities on the REALTORS® Are Good Neighbors Facebook page(link is external).

National Association of REALTORS®
Reprinted with permission

Ken Richardson brings at-risk youth off the streets and into local gyms to teach them martial arts—and help them turn away from gang violence.

When he was a teenager in 1981, Ken Richardson’s younger brother was shot and killed in gang violence. Coming from an abusive home, Richardson and his siblings grew up on the streets of Baltimore and often confronted dangerous situations, he explains. After the murder, “I realized that I had to do something to get the kids to put down their weapons,” says Richardson, a sales associate with Realty One Group Nest in North Andover, Mass.

For the last 30 years, Richardson has partnered with local clubs and youth centers to provide a place where he can bring at-risk youth in off the streets and teach them martial arts. While teaching self-defense skills and street smarts, Richardson also aims to inspire kids to turn away from a life of violence. His own backstory is a powerful way to connect. He’s launched No Weapon Needed(link is external), a program in partnership with Haverhill Inner City Boxing & Youth Development, a nonprofit gym, to provide not only self-defense classes but also mentorship and education opportunities for youth. Free tutoring is part of Richardson’s program.

“We want to instill in our boxers the idea that hard work, determination, generosity and, most importantly, education are not only essential to becoming a successful boxer but important to becoming a well-rounded, successful adult,” Richardson says. “Every kid is one adult away from a success story.” He adds that his mission is to be a leader and innovator in gun violence prevention and to improve the lives of young people from underprivileged communities.

Richardson not only provides self-defense classes but also has paid out of his own pocket for improvements to the facility for the Haverhill Inner City Boxing Club. He estimates that he has spent more than $100,000 on gym memberships for kids, gym equipment and even meals for the youth he serves, who typically come from poor backgrounds. “No Weapon Needed gives youth a place to go where they are socially accepted and wanted,” he says. “We are helping youth develop mentally, physically and spiritually, strengthening families and improving our community.”

To learn more about Richardson and other REALTORS® who are making extraordinary contributions to their communities and beyond, visit the REALTORS® Are Good Neighbors Facebook page(link is external).

National Association of REALTORS®
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David Wluka has brought back to life the history of Nowy Dwór, a Polish village that was decimated by Nazis in World War II. Now he’s helping to teach local schoolchildren to honor the Jewish legacy of their area—which they never knew about.

In the mid-Eastern region of Poland sits a lush, small town known as Nowy Dwór. From the early 17th century to World War II, Nowy Dwór was home to a thriving Jewish community of about 4,000, where REALTOR® David Wluka’s father—a Holocaust survivor—was born. The German occupation of Nowy Dwór began in 1939, and by the end of the war in 1945, nearly every resident had been killed.

In the late 1980s, Wluka, broker-owner of Wluka Real Estate Corp. in the Boston suburb of Sharon, Mass., traveled with his dad, Icek, to the Auschwitz concentration camp near Icek’s former hometown. It was the first time Icek had returned to the area since escaping with his life, and Wluka didn’t want him to make the journey alone. They then went to Nowy Dwór, where Icek had hoped to show Wluka what his life was like before the Holocaust. But when they arrived, all traces of Jewish life—the synagogue, Icek’s childhood home and the local cemetery—had vanished.

Wluka and his father made a pact to resurrect the cemetery and ensure the once-thriving Jewish community that resided in Nowy Dwór was remembered for generations to come. However, Icek passed away before the memorial became a reality, and it took a significant amount of time for the project to come to fruition. In the early 2000s, Wluka crossed paths with a man named Ze’ev Shaked, whose father ran a blacksmith shop with Icek. Inspired and filled with purpose, Wluka and Shaked teamed up and pressed on to restore the Jewish cemetery and build a memorial.

Over time as he worked on the project, Wluka learned that Nowy Dwór’s modern residents had never met a Jewish person and didn’t know the town’s rich Jewish history. The more he learned, the more he realized that education in conjunction with memorialization was necessary to truly honor Nowy Dwór. He wanted the memorial to serve not only as a historical marker but also a source of information and agent for change. To make that happen, Wluka says, the town’s children needed to be involved. “We worked with the Nowy Dwór schools, who took an interest in the project from the beginning,” he says.

Wluka and his partners on the memorial devised an essay contest in which school-age children write on the topic of racial tolerance after learning about the Jewish heritage in Nowy Dwór. Teachers also have access to the memorial as a teaching tool. The contest has been so impactful in the local schools that interest in participation spread to Mazowieki, the county where Nowy Dwór is located.

Today, the memorial is an integral part of the Nowy Dwór community. Working with local community members and leaders, Wluka and Shaked were able to ensure that the cemetery and memorial are cared for in perpetuity. In the U.S., Wluka speaks of the project and its significance to any local school interested in learning more, one of which was his alma mater, Boston University. Most recently, he spoke to students at Pope Francis Prep in Springfield, Mass. He also worked with his Israeli cousin, Zvi Plachinski, to send 100 students to Nowy Dwór to learn and live with other local students. The more children involved in the project, Wluka says, the better. And he hopes its influence keeps growing.

Current political unrest and violence worldwide, Wluka says, makes the Nowy Dwór memorial of utmost importance. “As a child of Holocaust survivors and a student of the Holocaust, I see conditions similar to what things were like in Germany in the 1930s. Racism, nationalism, fascism and worse are growing exponentially.”

However, children give him hope. “My outreach for change focuses on kids; they are the only means to effect it permanently,” Wluka says. “I believe that only the young will be able to bring us back to a sane world.”

To learn more about Wluka and other REALTORS® who are making extraordinary contributions to their communities and beyond, visit the REALTORS® Are Good Neighbors Facebook page(link is external).

National Association of REALTORS®
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Arizona agent Barbara Guy leads House of Refuge, a transitional housing facility, to get more people off the street and into a home.

When Barbara Guy was growing up in Phoenix, her grandparents owned a motel in a poor neighborhood. Most of the motel’s guests were long-term residents. “That was affordable housing,” says Guy, SRES, a sales associate with ProSmart Realty in Gilbert, Ariz. “Most of the people who lived there were sharecroppers or laborers. It was a melting pot: elderly, Filipino, Hispanic, Arab.”

Sometimes, the residents wouldn’t be able to pay monthly rent. So, Guy’s grandmother would accept fresh produce in lieu of money—and then, she’d chop it all up and cook a feast for everyone at the motel to enjoy. That memory still motivates Guy in her efforts to help her community today. “That’s my ‘why,’” she says. “This is why I serve.”

Since 2019, Guy has played a leadership role with House of Refuge(link is external), a nonprofit providing transitional housing and social services like job training to homeless families. The organization, which launched in 1996, has acquired 88 two-bedroom homes for the families it serves as well as a church and annexed office building for its operations. House of Refuge offers an initial one-year stay for families who qualify for its program, helping 1,060 people in 2021 alone.

Guy, who is chair of the board for House of Refuge, says its services, which include onsite learning and recreational activities for children, are especially important as affordability in the real estate market plummets. “Rents continue to increase, and a living wage is very difficult right now,” she says. “Our residents find themselves in situations where they’re just not able to make ends meet. If we had 200 more houses, we could fill them all. The need is so prevalent.”

Kayla Kolar, president and CEO of House of Refuge, says Guy is helping the nonprofit recruit volunteers and board members that bring an array of perspectives to the issue of solving homelessness. Guy even converted a former House of Refuge resident into a board member. “Her leadership also provides oversight to board governance, policymaking and fundraising that, in turn, helps the homeless families we serve,” Kolar says.

Guy says she’s now focusing on the future for House of Refuge and how to expand its offerings. “What’s next for the parents and for the kids? How do we lift them up and create opportunity? Vocational school? College? How do we make that space for them? These are our big dreams to empower them to stop the cycle of homelessness.”

To learn more about Guy and other REALTORS® who are making extraordinary contributions to their communities and beyond, visit the REALTORS® Are Good Neighbors Facebook page(link is external).

National Association of REALTORS®
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Mary Liu helps underserved children locally and abroad receive life-changing medical care while also giving Asian Americans a tool to combat hate.

REALTOR® Mary Liu was born with a cleft palate and lip that required eight surgeries to correct. It was thanks to the help of several nonprofit organizations that she was able to receive the medical care she needed, she says, because her family was too poor to afford the surgeries.

“I remember what that was like, and I always said I was going to give back when I was able,” recalls Liu, a sales associate with Vanguard Properties in San Francisco. She says her real estate business has given her the opportunity to do just that.

For a while, Liu was involved in public speaking. And through her speaking engagements, she met some of the people behind an organization called Alliance for Smiles, based in San Francisco(link is external). The organization sends surgical teams all over the world to provide free cleft palate and lip surgeries to underserved children and families. Liu knew it was the right organization in which to get involved. “At first, I helped with fundraising, and I went on the medical missions as the photographer and record keeper. Now I oversee the medical missions process,” she says.

Liu says her involvement in Alliance for Smiles is a healing and life-changing endeavor. As a Chinese American, Liu’s first mission in China gave her insight into the puzzle of her own experience, providing her closure. “I have no photos of me as a child before I had my surgeries,” she says. “On my first mission to China, I was able to see what I would have looked like. I was able to be in the operating room and see the surgery. It brought everything full circle for me.”

Pivoting in a Moment of Need

When COVID-19 hit, Alliance for Smiles was no longer able to send its surgery teams around the world, but Liu wanted to make sure the organization could continue to help children anyway. Fundraising, which was overseen by Liu, continued online. Each year, the organization’s annual gala was its main fundraising effort, but it was shuttered due to the pandemic. But Liu found a way to transition the gala to an online event. For two years, the event was held online with much success, which allowed Alliance for Smiles to continue funding surgeries.

“We started training nurses and doctors in various parts of the world over Zoom,” Liu says. “That way, they could still perform the surgeries. Now we can go back to in-person missions, but we found that the Zoom trainings were really helpful, so we still do them.” The trainings, she said, prepare the local medical team in advance, which streamlines the surgery and aftercare process once the Alliance for Smiles team is on the ground. “Within an hour and a half, we’ve changed the life of a child and their family.”

Shielding Her Community From Harm

Also active in the Rotary Club of San Francisco, Liu has been involved in a number of projects over the years. She’s helped provide bikes to underserved children, hosted baby showers for mothers in need and fed families facing food insecurity. She serves as the club’s president as well. “I’m the first Asian American president in the club’s history,” she says.

One of the most recent projects she worked on through the Rotary Club was in response to the rise in hate crimes targeting Asian Americans. “When I kept hearing news reports every day about an Asian person being attacked, I asked what I could do to protect others and myself,” she adds.

She’d stopped carrying a purse and quit wearing her jewelry outside of her home, but she wanted to do more at the community level. She wanted to provide a layer of safety to the Asian American community in San Francisco, so she wrote a grant for personal safety alarms. The alarm, about 2.5 inches, fits on a keychain or lanyard. It has a pin that, when pulled, releases a 130-decibel siren designed to scare off the attacker or alert the surrounding area that the individual is in trouble. “Through Rotary Club, we partnered with the San Francisco Police Department, the Chamber of Commerce and other Rotary Clubs to identify where the greatest need was,” she says.

They identified Asian seniors in low-income housing areas as being the most in need. Liu and the Rotary Club then partnered with the local Mercy Housing, the Catholic Charities and a local food bank to distribute the safety alarms. “This is about education as well,” Liu says. “We’ve not only handed out thousands of these alarms but also made sure the seniors knew how to use them and where to carry them. We also handed out pamphlets with information on how and when to use the alarm.” The safety devices, she says, provide a layer of protection for a section of the community that had none. “In Chinatown, for instance, seniors were scared to get their food or walk the streets of San Francisco. Having the alarm gives them a sense of security.”

National Association of REALTORS®
Reprinted with permission

Pending home sales are posting annual losses in the double-digits as home buyers continue to back away from the market due to surging mortgage rates.

House hunters are backing away from the housing market as mortgage rates continue to rise sharply. The National Association of REALTORS®’ newly released Pending Home Sales Index—a forward-looking indicator of home sales based on contract signings—fell 2% in August compared to July and is down 24.2% compared to a year ago. This marks the third consecutive month that pending home sales have fallen.

“The direction of mortgage rates—upward or downward—is the prime mover for home buying, and decade-high rates have deeply cut into contract signings,” says Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist. “If mortgage rates moderate and the economy continues adding jobs, then home buying should also stabilize.”

Until then, home buyers are faced with mortgage rates that have doubled compared to a year ago, adding hundreds of dollars to monthly mortgage payments. Yun warned that mortgage rates are likely to rise to near 7% in the coming months. That would mark a far jump from the 2.88% rates just one year ago.

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported on Wednesday that 30-year rates with conforming loan balances reached 6.52% last week, prompting mortgage applications for home purchases to fall by 29% compared to the same week a year ago.

Yun has said the real estate market has fallen into a “housing recession.” He expects the economy to remain sluggish throughout the remainder of the year. “Only when inflation calms down will we see mortgage rates begin to steady,” Yun says.

The higher rates also are leading more home buyers to get cold feet and back out of existing-home purchase contracts. About 15.2% of contracts for homes in August were canceled, according to newly released data from Redfin. That’s up from 12.1% a year earlier. In some Sun Belt regions, like Phoenix, Tampa, Fla., and Las Vegas, the number of canceled contracts has risen by 20% or more. These areas of the country also have seen the largest uptick in home sales and price appreciation over recent years.

What’s Ahead for Housing

NAR predicts that the higher mortgage rates will cause existing-home sales to drop by15.2% in 2022, reaching 5.19 million units. New-home sales are projected to drop by 20.9%.

Still, limited housing inventory and nearly “nonexistent distressed property sales” continue to support home prices, Yun says. Despite the drop in sales, he forecasts that home prices will post an increase of 9.6% for 2022.

But Yun does foresee slower price appreciation ahead for 2023 and says home sales will bounce back. “Next year, the annual median home price is expected to rise by only 1.2%,” Yun says. “Home sales will pick up in the second half of 2023, but will be down by 7.1% overall.”

Regional Snapshot for Contract Signings

Three out of the four major regions of the U.S. saw month-over-month decreases in contract signings in August. The West was the only one to post a gain, albeit modest, NAR reports. All major regions posted year-over-year, double-digit declines.

“Home prices are the least affordable in the West and, consequently, the region suffered deeper annual declines in contract signings due to rising interest rates when compared to other areas of the country,” Yun says. “However, the recent increases of the last two months, though small, are encouraging.”

National Association of REALTORS®
Reprinted with permission