1. Reprinted with permission of Banker & Tradesman.
This document may constitute advertising under the rules of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts.
Reprinted from the issue of December 1st, 2014
T h e R e a l E s t a t e , B a n k i n g a n d C o m m e rc i a l W e e k l y f o r M a s s a c h u s e tt s
A PUBLICATION OF THE WARREN GROUP
Established 1872 www.BankerandTradesman.com
Always drawn to a career in the nonprofit world,
Danielle Samalin’s interest turned from international
to domestic development work as she was drawn in
to the problem of supplying affordable housing –
something that hit the New York City native very close
to home. Currently, she runs a online homeownership
education program, Framework, for the Housing
Partnership Network, and was recently recognized as
one of Housing Wire’s 2014 “Women of Influence.”
Danielle Samalin
Title: Vice President, Homeownership Initiatives at Housing Partnership Network; President, Framework
Age: 36
Experience: 10 years
Education
For The
First-Time
Buyer
BY COLLEEN M. SULLIVAN | BANKER & TRADESMAN STAFF
In Person

2. B a n k e r & T r a d e s m a n2 D E C E M B E R 1 , 2 0 1 4
Reprinted with permission of Banker & Tradesman.
This document may constitute advertising under the rules of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts.
Q:What got you interested in housing? How did
you end up with the Housing Partnership Network?
A:My background is in urban planning
and community development. [In college]
I was very interested in international
development, and I thought that would
be my path. And then in grad school, I
saw very quickly that urban communities,
including the one I was living in, provided
some exciting opportunities and significant
challenges that I had the skills to address.
And I ended up here. It was sort of a
winding path, but I feel like I’m in the right
place.
Q: You mentioned that your parents’
experience also influenced you?
A: Growing up in New York City, my
parents were both artists, and I sort of saw
firsthand the impact that not owning a
home could have on the ability of a family
to remain in the community where they
live. Through their displacement, I became
aware of how important it is to focus on
homeownership as a wealth-building and
community-stabilization tool. They were
in Downtown Brooklyn. It was a great
neighborhood, and I loved growing up
there. It was an affordable neighborhood
for artists, and then, after the economic
boom of the ’90s, all of a sudden it wasn’t.
Its proximity to Manhattan, the fact that
it really is a great place to live, I think it
became unaffordable [for people like my
parents]. The neighborhood changed a lot –
mostly in very positive ways. The fact of the
matter is, my family could have benefitted
much more from that neighborhood change
if they had owned a home. If they had
known back in 1978 when they first moved
to the neighborhood that the financial
decision of committing to a mortgage versus
paying rent – while it might in the medium
term have been cheaper – it would have
been a very positive long-term decision for
the wealth-building of our family. And they
just didn’t have the advice.
Q: How did you first get involved in affordable
housing?
A: [In grad school at NYU I started
doing] community development work,
working with local credit unions that were
trying to provide financial services to un-
banked populations in their neighborhoods
in Brooklyn. And you could immediately
see, if this credit union developed a
mortgage product, then residents would
no longer be getting their mortgages from
the Laundromat down the street. [And
that got me interested in the mortgage
finance world.] At the time, there were
these products out there that were
less-sustainable, less affordable, with
much less commitment to education of
the homebuyers – and they were being
marketed very aggressively. And the
products that were more sustainable and
healthy were being developed by these local
credit unions that didn’t have the marketing
budgets and didn’t have the systems in
place to ramp up and get out and sell their
product.
Q: And that tied into to your work with
Framework?
A: Well, Framework sort of emerged
out of a belief that educated buyers are
successful homeowners. The data shows
that people avoid foreclosure if they are
educated. So we at the Housing Partnership
Network got together with one of our partner
members, Minnesota Homeownership
Center, and we thought, ok, [let’s] imagine
an ideal homebuying market, where
homeowership education is as natural a part
of the buying process as finding a Realtor.
How can we do this? How can we provide
this in a way that’s intuitive, interactive,
mobile, something that really speaks to the
new generation of home buyers? … We tried
to design [Framework] so that when they’re
searching online for this information, they
find us first, and we become their trusted
partner through their home search. It’s
certainly very different from how we saw
people buying homes leading up to the
foreclosure crisis. n
TOP FIVE CHALLENGES MILLENNIAL HOMEBUYERS FACE:
1 Being scared to buy because
of witnessing the housing
crash.
2 Access to credit.
3 Student loan debt.
4 Being confused by the
process. 5 Lack of information
– buyers need tools
that aren’t trying
to steer them to a
particular product.