Bad Credit Doesn’t Mean You Can’t Buy a Home
If someone had told me years ago that we would be able to buy a home with very little credit history ( my husband) and bad credit ( yelp ! Me putting my head down in shame), I would have told you that you were crazy. I honestly never thought that we would have a home of our own- one that wasn’t tied to a job or one that we weren’t renting. But several years back meaning 11 years this February we were kind of forced to look into buying our own home. Let me set the back story for you.
My husband, Raul, came to America from Mexico at the age of 18, with no money and basically no formula education past the sixth grade. It wasn’t until he met his boss, Bill, that he was given a chance to shine. Fast forward some 30 years and he still works for Bill part-time. If it wasn’t for Bill given him a chance we would be there today. When he was working full-time for Bill, we lived in houses he arranged for us. The first house we paid rent but a reduced rate. And when I was pregnant with Mikaela, my second daughter, we were able to move into a house that Bill owned, I finally was able to stay home and raise my girls.
Raising two little girls, we often dreamed of owning our home. But there always seemed to be something that got in our way. One thing was my bad credit. I am making a confession here, I can’t be trusted with a credit card and that is one the reason we don’t have one to this day. I will admit that I love to shop. And add that to student loan debt and you get the picture- BAD CREDIT should be my middle name.
Fast forward, a few more years and our family got even bigger adding our third and final daughter, Gracie. At that point, we were living in another house that Bill owned rent free. But because of a dispute about the land, it was on, we were sort of forced to move. We didn’t have many options so we decided to check and see if we could get a home loan to finally buy a house of our own.
We had several options that we looked at
- One was checking to see if we are able to get what is called bad credit loans.
- Another option was to see if someone would cosign with us on the house.
- Still another option was putting the house in only one of our names.
Once we were finally able to figure out the financing part of home buying, which in my opinion could make or break a marriage, we were able to purchase the home we now live in and where we have seen our three little girls- Gracie was in kindergarten when we moved, grow up to become beautiful young ladies.
So if you think bad credit or no credit will stop you from ever becoming homeowners, stop thinking that and started investigating the options that are available to you.
