When Katie Israel got the help she needed after tumbling down a yearslong chasm of drugs and alcohol, her first priority was to find a safe home for her three children.
“I made bad choices and got involved with bad people, but losing custody of my son and then giving birth to twins while I was in prison turned me around,” said Ms. Israel, 39. “I thought I was taking good care of my son before that, but the drugs were taking over my life and I was exposing him to the wrong people.”
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Ms. Israel’s first step toward her second chance included a stint in a recovery house, followed by transitional housing and a job at ABLE, a local clothing and jewelry company with a mission to empower women. Ms. Israel makes and repairs jewelry at the company’s Nashville store.
“I got my twins back when they were 8 months old and got my son back after I lived in my apartment for a year,” she said. “I was sleeping in the dining room so the kids could have the bedrooms. I never had any privacy at all. I had this dream of buying a house someday, and the head of ABLE introduced me to her friend Jessica, a real estate agent.”
Jessica Tammaro, a broker with eXp Realty in Nashville, has a passion for helping women become homeowners.
“Katie didn’t think she could really buy a house, but I talked to her about how to save money and to get a prepaid credit card to improve her credit,” Ms. Tammaro said. “I kept checking in with her. Then, about 18 months or two years later, she was ready.”
By last summer, Ms. Israel had saved $10,000 and been preapproved by Bank of Tennessee for a loan for first-time buyers — $180,000 with a zero down payment. She took a homeowners education class to qualify for the program.
“Katie really wanted to stay in Nashville near her work, but the median home price there by July 2024 was about $460,000 to $475,000,” Ms. Tammaro said.
That was well above her budget, so they expanded the search to suburbs within an hour’s drive of downtown Nashville. The housing market over the summer was slowing down, which helped with competition. “Plus, homes in her price range were not super desirable, which worked in our favor,” Ms. Tammaro said.
Ms. Israel, along with her 16-year-old son and 4-year-old twins, considered about 10 homes in all and then narrowed those options to three.
“I wanted three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a yard for my kids so they would have a safe place to play,” she said. “I also wanted a reasonable commute to my job.”
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