I graduated from the University in December of 2007. After working a few part time jobs I was offered a teaching contract in a small town in Arizona. The housing boom had just went bust and I was mystified at the number of empty homes in the area. Six months later I decided to start looking at homes.
Many of my co-workers had recently purchased houses and were cashing in on the First Time Home-buyer Tax Credit. I became madly jealous and embraced the process whole-heartedly.
The first developer I spoke with ran my credit and broke the news to me. I had accrued too much revolving credit debt during my college career and I was not able to handle a home loan.
It seemed like so little at the time...swipe of a card here, swipe of a card there...but it added up to almost fifteen thousand dollars in debt!
After weeks of being sad I decided to act instead of feeling sorry for myself. We joined a Debt Consolidation Counseling Service and began lowering our debt. Over the next 3 years we saved every penny we could.
Finally in 2010 the time came for us to have our credit ran by a lending agency. It was above the FICO minimum!
Then came the fun, but it was just as stressful. We found a real estate agent at a Wedding Expo that was extremely helpful and polite. Even though we were not high rollers looking to purchase a multimillion dollar home, the agent treated us like it. He drove over sixty miles one way just to show us homes in the area we wanted to buy.
The advice we were given was outstanding and to this day I would not trade a single minute of our home-buying experience for the world.
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