Vincent Ezzo, a Howard Hanna Real Estate agent in Fayetteville, New York, recently made the news for responding to a couple struggling to finish buying their home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to Syracuse.com, Jerome Bryant and Andrea O’Dell “were sure the shutdown had crushed their dreams of owning their own home” when non-essential businesses began closing in March. On March 5, they had qualified for a mortgage on a $140,000 house in Cicero, and were supposed to close on May 1.
On April 2, they were featured in a Syracuse.com story about how the pandemic was affecting the real estate industry — one of Central New York’s biggest — at its busiest time of year. At that point, they did not expect to close on time, as the closure of non-essential businesses had reduced their income to a level that “doesn’t pay enough to qualify for a mortgage.”
Fortunately, Vincent read this April 2nd story:
“Things were moving along at such a great clip, then I saw the article,” Vincent Ezzo, of Howard Hanna Real Estate said. “I thought, holy crap, what are you doing in the paper?”
He shared the story with his network and started making calls to Empower Credit Union.
They then closed on the house one day earlier than expected. While Vincent could not attend the closing, as he usually would, he was happy to see the couple moving forward:
“People think we sell houses,” Ezzo said to a reporter while he was missing the closing. “That’s not what we do. We help people move from one chapter in their lives to the next. The trials and tribulations that some of these buyers and sellers go through, it’s so much.”
You can read this story in its entirety here, and can also see the April 2nd article here.
