So…I’m trying to buy a house. I have a house, and I have no plans to move, and yes, I am trying to buy another house. My father’s house. The house I grew up in. My father has been having money troubles for the past several years, and hasn’t dug himself out even after declaring bankruptcy last year. He’s currently facing foreclosure because he can’t make his mortgage payments, and even after going through all the loan modification channels at Chase, they actually had the gall to come back with an offer of a interest-only mortgage that actually had a higher interest rate than the note he was trying to get modified! Now if he can’t make the payments on a 9.25% mortgage, why would a company even offer a 9.5% mortgage?

So I’ve started the process to try and buy my dad’s house. It’s not the perfect answer for me, not right now, but with a couple of tweaks to our household spending we can make the nut. Dad leased a portion of the land to the county five years ago to build an emergency communications tower on, and that provides him with $600/month in payments. If I can get a note between and 5-6%, which should be doable, I’ll only have to come up with about $400/month to bridge the gap between what the tower provides and what the mortgage will be each month. And it’s hard to turn down an opportunity to buy a 2200 sq. ft. house on 9 acres for $170K. The tower deal makes the mortgage reachable, and the payment from the county increases incrementally over time, so there will come a time about halfway through the life of the mortgage that the property will actually generate more revenue each month than it costs. So long-term it makes sense. And it lets my dad keep the house he built when he married my mother, so that’s pretty important to me, too. So there might be a few less trips to Vegas in my immediate future, but I’ve got a few things floating out there that make this only a stretch for the first few months of the year, after which I think we’ll be in pretty good shape.

If you enjoy this post, or just want to make sure you don\'t miss a new release, please take a second to support me on Patreon!