Back in 2003, after coming home for the summer after my sophomore year at Western Washington University, my parents dropped two bombshells on my older brother and I...
1) they were going to be losing the house to foreclosure soon, and
2) they were getting divorced.
Number 1 was a shock, number 2 wasn't surprising. Thankfully, although I was only 20 at the time, I had been learning about real estate since I was 11 years old. You see, as a kid I'd use the money I earned from my paper route/lawn mowing/random odd jobs to buy those late night infomercial "How To Buy A House For No Money Down" VHS & cassette tapes. Yeah, I was an odd kid in that regard. Real estate was always really interesting to me. What I did next made all of that money spent on infomercials worth it.
I figured out how many months behind on the mortgage my parents were, took my savings (which was mostly money saved from working full time while in college, as well as leftover student loan money), and got them current on their mortgage. Then I did some cosmetic fixes to the house and put it on the market as a For Sale By Owner (FSBO). Thank goodness the real estate agent that represented the buyer didn't screw us over, because after I became a real estate agent and learned more about real estate contracts, I would never recommend going the FSBO route. Long story short, I orchestrated the sale of the house, and they made enough money off the sale to pay me back, pay off all of their joint debt, and they each walked away with $2500 to start their new lives.
What I learned during this time was that I wanted to help families, like my own, escape financial hardships through creative real estate solutions. I've been helping people sell and buy houses ever since. I'm grateful and honored to be able to help the families that I do, and I'm excited to hear if my expertise would be helpful to you.