Nehemiah Corporation of America

Nehemiah Corporation of America

Company type	Nonprofit
Founded	1994
Founder	Don Harris
Headquarters	Sacramento, California
Key people	Scott Syphax, CEO
Website	www.nehemiahcorp.org

Nehemiah Corporation of America is a non-profit organization based in Sacramento, California specializing in homeownership, affordable housing and community development. It started in 1994 as a small organization, but grew to prominence later in the 1990s after it developed a program that allowed home buyers to make down payments on their purchases using funds that were derived from the home sellers. This program, the Nehemiah Program, became popular and was widely emulated, giving birth to what came to be known as the seller-funded down-payment assistance industry. The industry attracted criticism from U.S. federal agencies (particularly the Government Accountability Office and the Internal Revenue Service) and was ultimately shut down in 2008 by a change in federal law.

Since 2008, the Nehemiah Corporation has been operating as a social enterprise organization. Via its affiliates and subsidiaries, it has been providing real-estate development capital for low-income neighborhoods, as well as providing instructional and other resources related to individual finance and home ownership. It also sponsors management training for young adults.^[1]