If you are looking to put diversity, equity and inclusion into practice, this is the course for you. There are many ways to get started but here, we are examining pathways for assisting non-traditional buyers in today’s market.

Topics Covered

• Understanding the homeownership gap
• Down payment myths & resources
• Qualifying income sources for buyers and mortgage lender connections

Course Duration

• 7 minutes

About The Instructor

Matt Difanis considers himself the world's most improbable DEI and fair housing evangelist. Matt served as the 2018 President of the 50,000 member Illinois REALTORS® trade organization. During his 4 years on the state leadership team, he went from unaware of any of these issues to aware, then concerned, and eventually outraged. In the last few years, he has developed a reputation for building bridges to historically marginalized groups that have been impacted by housing discrimination--particularly the Black community. Matt served as the 2020 Chair of the National Association of REALTORS® Professional Standards Committee, which is charged with updating and interpreting the NAR Code of Ethics. During his time leading that group, he advanced a series of proposals that eventually became Standard of Practice 10-5 in the Code of Ethics—a ban on discriminatory hate speech by REALTORS®. That journey has landed Matt in the pages of The New York Times, in a Bloomberg Businessweek feature about housing discrimination, as a live guest on Bloomberg Quicktake, and as the exclusive guest for a full hour on the Tavis Smiley Show on KBLA in Los Angeles. Matt is a full-time practitioner and multi-office broker-owner in Champaign, Illinois, where he leads a highly inclusive real estate team. On Sunday mornings, you can find him in the tech booth of Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church, a historically Black church, where he runs sound and the live stream, as well as doing volunteer photography. Matt earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and his juris doctor from the University of Illinois.