We were living in an apartment, but we wanted to buy a house. The American dream! We had bad credit, but we were determined! We found a perfect house for us and made an offer, but couldn’t get financing or didn’t have the money to put down on it. We made an arrangement with the seller to rent the house for the total amount of the mortgage, and pay for any repairs and maintenance out of our own pockets. We gave him $7,000 (that we didn’t have… we borrowed that money from my work!). We told the seller, that if we couldn’t qualify for a loan in 365 days from the day we rented from him, that he could keep the money and any and all repairs and he could sell the house. We closed exactly 1 year later. We paid $105,000.00 for the house. Several years later we sold it for $180,000.00 and bought a house for $275,000.00, which again, was too much house for us. We could buy it because we had perfect credit by then….. That is not always good for you. Had we stayed in the first house, it would have been worth $300,000.00 and we would have been debt free!
