Kitsap Real Estate Advisor

Tammy Young
Jack Turney
Bremerton, WA

Jim Freeman
Coldwell Banker Park Shore
America One Finance
4235 SE Mile Hill Drive
Port Orchard, WA 98366

Dear Jim,

My husband, Jack, and I are both business owners. We work hard, give great service to our clients, take care of our employees, manage, market, pay the bills, solve problems and make it all land on time. I think we do quite well juggling all of the balls but sometimes things happen outside of our control.

In the past year one of Jack’s biggest clients was facing his own set of financial difficulties and was unable to pay tens of thousands of dollars that he owed Jack for services. So, what was Jack to do?

He managed it very well actually. He kept working with the client to keep open the possibility that it would eventually be paid, kept the doors open, kept the employees going and kept other revenues coming in. He had to make some tough decisions prioritizing who was paid, at times. This meant that some of his payments were late and he had to spend a lot of time talking to his creditors, explaining the situation, his plans for payment and making progress reports. It took several months but Jack did manage to collect the receivable, catch up on his own bills and emerge stronger than before.

The credit rating agencies, however, gave him no credit for doing a tough job well.

Fortunately, my business was rock steady during that period and was growing and improving to the point where it became necessary to buy another home. One came up in the neighborhood that we were interested in and it seemed nearly perfect. Jack and I owned some other real estate and had maintained a good payment record over the years, even through the tough time with Jack’s customer.

So, naturally, we went back to the mortgage lenders with whom we had worked successfully in the past. Granted, things were changing fast in the mortgage markets…and not for the better. Still, we were shocked when five lenders all told us they would not even look at our loan request. The credit issues due to Jack’s problem and the fact that we were self-employed were the two strikes against us. It was always tough as a self-employed couple to obtain credit but now it seemed like the lenders were ganging up on us. It didn’t seem fair and we were very discouraged.

That’s when I found your ad for lease to own homes. Jack and I talked about it and decided to look into it further. At least somebody was offering us an alternative. When we received more of the details it really made sense to us and we asked to join the program.

Since we were only interested in the one home it made it difficult to negotiate the right kind of offer that fit your program design so we were getting ready to be disappointed again. But we were a little bit shocked that you suggested we try to qualify again for our own loan. I mean, we had just been turned down by 5 other people who had worked with us before and were very skeptical. Because you were both a real estate broker and a loan originator we had hope that maybe you would take a different approach so we met with you and your loan broker.

The approach you took was definitely a different experience from anyone else that we had worked with. You really dug into the details of our financial information and right before our eyes let us view the inner workings of what really happens in “mortgage land”. It was a bit scary and interesting at the same time but at the end our jaws really dropped when you told us that you might have a way to qualify me for a loan. After a couple of days you said you had a conditional approval and we were dumbfounded but didn’t waste any time getting back into the deal with a revised offer. There were a few more bumps in the road negotiating with the seller but in the end you found something that worked for them and helped us acquire the home at a super value. The price was good but the way you created a deal structure answering all of our needs beyond the price was truly amazing.

You were careful to explain the details of what you were doing throughout the process and why, which built our confidence that this could actually happen even as we watched the mortgage market meltdown in the news. You took us through all of the obstacles that appeared along the way and held everybody together.

Bottom Line: We got a great deal and were able to finance it with a zero down loan.

You and your team of professionals did something for us that no one else we knew could do, not even those people who had placed loans for us in the past. We only wish that we had met you sooner. Anyone, but especially self employed people, should really get in touch with you when they want to buy, sell, finance or lease real estate. They would have nothing to lose and everything to gain and would be crazy not to.

Thank you for all you have done for us. We look forward to working with you again.

Tammy Young