My name is Jake and I wanted to share my story. I have been renting a house for several years in town and have been wanting to move out in the country to get away from everything for a while. I was hoping to put my family in a better living situation and possibly in a home all our own. I am a single father and recently engaged.

One day my fiancé and I were scrolling through Facebook on one of the local swap shop groups and saw a house for sale by owner. I called the owner of the house several times and left several messages expressing my interest in his home. He called me back and we set a time up to see the home.

We saw the house and immediately knew that it was what we were looking for. It was a 5 bedroom, 3 bathroom, with 2900 square feet and a barn on 3 acres. It was just the right distance out of the city but also still a short drive for me in my current job.

I have never purchased a home without a realtor being involved, so the process was new to me. However, the homeowner made it very simple for me. He explained that the selling price was $225,000 and already had the contract ready for me to sign and title work ordered to expedite the process. I asked him if the price would be negotiable. He then asked me if I had a pre-approval.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have a pre-approval due to some items on my credit report. I let the homeowner know that if he would allow, I would hope to do rent-to-own option with him.

He then let me know right now he wasn’t in a position to be able to allow me to do that. But he did know someone that may be able to help me out.

He reached out to his Loan Officerto see what my credit looked like and if it was something we could work with. The Loan officer contacted me to pull my credit. She let me know that I wasn’t in too bad of a spot, but had a few items that needed taken care of in order to get approved. I was making my payments on time but just had a few items on the report holding me back.

In an effort to get me into the house, he allowed me to lease the house no more than 6 months to allow me to re-establish my credit while I worked with Credit Law Center. I thought to myself this is a blessing because I wanted this home so bad! When I signed the lease agreement, I also signed the contract to purchase the house, pending my improvement on my credit scores and paying the rent while going through credit repair.

I called Credit Law Center and they walked through my credit report with me and told me things they felt we could get resolved. I paid $1 to have them pull my credit and start the process. I did have to pay $20 for monitoring so they would update my report every 30 days but it was worth it. They told me everything that I had to work on and what the cost would be upfront. They also explained to me that I wouldn’t pay for anything that did not come off the credit report. I signed the contract in hopes of improvement so we could officially own the home and they got started right away.

Shortly after the 45 day mark, Credit Law Center called me with good news. 2 items were resolved and my score jumped 40 points. They said they would continue to go after some other items I had on my credit, but kept me updated throughout the next few months. After my second round of repair, they told me to contact my Loan Officer and have her re-pull my credit to see if I was able to qualify.

After all was said and done, we were able to become homeowners. Thanks to the homeowner and trusting me with working through the repair process, my fiancé and I now have a home that is exactly what we were looking for. Because of his outside of the box thinking, I am proud to say that we turned around everything and became official owners in 65 days. The process was quick and I can’t thank Credit Law Center enough for knowing the ins and outs of how the mortgage process works so that I could become mortgage ready as fast as I did.