Torbello Fund

Ilka Torres and her wife Yvette Bello had just closed on a house in Glastonbury and, as they looked around, they thought this could be home, the place where they would raise their daughter. It was a single-family home they’d longed for.

“We couldn’t believe what we just bought,” Torres said. “My upbringing was very poor, and Yvette’s Dad owned a three-family home which was purchased with a lot of hard work. And here we were in our first single family home that we would own together in an amazing suburban town with great schools for our daughter.”

Then the phone rang. It was their loan officer who told them they still owed $13,000 on the purchase. Their real estate agent had not revealed all the fees. “Luckily we had that money,” Torres said. They kept thinking about how “the trajectory of our lives would have changed if we hadn’t,” Bello added.

They talked about people they knew, Latina heads of households who wanted to buy a home. But many lived on a razor thin margin, as they had earlier in their own lives.

Torres began to think about going into real estate. She wanted to make certain this wouldn’t happen to anyone else. At the time, she was working for the state Department of Policy and Management. A co-worker’s sister had opened her own real estate firm. “She was the first women of color we knew who had left a full-time job to go into real estate. She owned properties, and was doing well,” Bello said. “I think it clicked in Ilka’s head that there was a different world out there.”

Torres continued to work full time and took real estate classes at night at Manchester Community College and got her real estate license. For 17 years, she’s worked in a field she said she loves.  

Over time, she and Bello realized their hearts were in Hartford and they moved there. Bello had grown up there, a daughter of Mexican immigrants. Torres was born in Puerto Rico and moved with her mother and family to Hartford when she was young. 

They rented out their Glastonbury home and began to build their own portfolio of properties in Hartford and East Hartford.

Bello said they often pick “the ugliest house on the street” and turn it into something lovely. They’ve assembled “a small but mighty crew” and rehab the properties, changing neighborhoods one house at a time.

Earlier this year, Torres launched her own firm, Torbello Real Estate Advisors, purchasing a building on Broad Street in Hartford for their office. Bello, who worked in the nonprofit sector and later for a foundation, decided she too would get her real estate license. After holding down two jobs for years, she now works for the Torbello firm full-time.

“We see potential in these homes and in our community,” Bello said. “We believe in the power of Latinas and the powerful roles they play in their families – caregiving for elders and for those younger. And we believe in the transformational power of real estate.”  

They want to continue to push that potential forward, so they established the Torbello Fund at The Community Foundation.

They chose The Community Foundation because of the reach and impact of the Progreso Latino Fund across two decades and because of The Foundation’s longstanding commitment to the Latine community. “The depth of their programming and the integrity with which they are serving this community is years ahead of other foundations,” Bello said. “It feels like a celebration of philanthropists coming together, giving what they can to make change.”

The Torbello Fund will be used to support Latine women who want to gain a foothold in the housing market. “We want to provide support to the women we meet every day who are trying to do something to pull ahead so they can breathe a little more, so they can have safe and stable housing for their families,” Bello said.

“Ideally, I would like to help them pay for housing inspections or help with a down payment or a deposit or if they need to get a property ready when they are applying for a loan,” Torres said. “We want to help women in our community in any way we can to get them into that home.”

As the Torbello Fund grows, they hope to also provide scholarships to high school students who want to pursue careers in real estate and to provide mentorship as well.

The couple and their daughter, Veronica Rivera, are excited to create a fund that will continue in perpetuity.

Giving has been part of their families going back generations. No matter how much or little they had, they gave to others in need. “That’s who we are,” Torres said.