Together we can build and preserve access to affordable housing for our Cass-Clay community’s workforce.

Our Mission

To preserve and advance access to sustainable affordable homeownership as a means to create a stronger community.

What is a Community Land Trust?

A conventional community land trust (CLT) is a nonprofit, community-based organization that works to provide perpetually affordable home ownership opportunities. In the truest sense, a CLT acquires land and removes it from the speculative, for-profit, real estate market. CLT’s hold the land they own “in trust” forever for the benefit of the community by ensuring it will always remain affordable for homebuyers.

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Like all nonprofits, CLT’s follow local laws and zoning requirements as well as the organizational bylaws put in place when the CLT was established. CLT’s are governed by a board of directors made up of community members and CLT homeowners. Members of the CLT elect the board of directors.

There are over 240 CLT’s in the nation today as well as several organizations using the CLT model to provide affordable home ownership opportunities in Minnesota and North Dakota. There are CLT’s in cities, suburbs and rural areas.

Changing lives
one home at a time.

Becoming a Home Owner

The Shared Equity Model

Take your first steps towards purchasing a Cass Clay Community Land Trust home by completing our Qualifying Form, which will help us determine if you are eligible.

At Cass Clay Community Land Trust, we use a Shared Equity Model to preserve affordable housing opportunities forever to qualified households. We are serving community members who are striving to become homeowners but face barriers to achieving this lifelong dream, including first-time homebuyers and individuals who lack the necessary down payment or income to purchase a house at the market-rate.

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Shared equity homeownership ensures long-term affordability by using subsidies to lower the initial purchase price of the home, thus bridging the gap between what the qualified buyer is able to afford in a mortgage and the actual mortgage cost. The CLT is able to do this because when the home is sold to an eligible buyer, the CLT retains ownership of the land beneath the home. The land is leased to the homeowner through a 99-year ground lease which is inheritable and renewable.

When the homeowner purchases a CLT home and signs the ground lease, they are also agreeing to share the equity value of the home’s appreciation, if and when the homeowner decides to sell. This allows the next low to moderate income buyer the same opportunity to purchase a home at an affordable price. The sales price is determined by using the CLT resale formula allowing the home to stay affordable for future generations. Shared Equity Model

In the News

Inforum

Fargo-Moorhead affordable housing program to kick off early in 2020

The FM Extra

Land trust aims to make housing affordable

Inforum

Plan calls for property improvements in Fargo’s old core neighborhood

“Cass Clay Community Land Trust helped give my family a safer more peaceful place to live. My kids have a backyard to play in and for the first time STAIRS! I'm so relieved to finally have the opportunity to build equity instead of paying rent I will never see again. I cried happy tears, it was a prayer answered!”

The Jennings