Housing (time to get a credit card)

Wait a bit, I bet those sweet houses will be 50k in no time.

Looks like you need to start working on building some good credit, because without that status you will be stuck in the non-preferred/bad cred status for a long time. Get a credit card, personal line of credit, or something that you can have extended to you.... use the credit wisely (meeping charge a small amount and PAY it off when due). Your credit worthiness will rise, as you must prove yourself to be worthy.

Remember, you are asking someone to loan you a big chunk of cash. To them, you have no record now, and a bad one from the past. Their experience tells them that you will continue to be a loser (credit-wise), because you haven't proven to them that you can handle things in a responsible manner. And yes, you have to prove to them, because:

A. Your poor and need the money. B. They have the money. C. You have no "hand" in this matter, but must grovel to them.

Good luck. Should take a year or two. By then, home prices will be lower.

You don't have to deal with a bank directly. I bought a home with a low credit score and had a pile of meep on my credit report (although paid off, it was just showing I had once meeped up). After getting rejected over and over through different banks, I started looking at mortgage brokers in the phone book, and within 20 days of meeting my first broker, I was signing papers on my first hizzous, with a fixed rate and taxes and insurance included and ZERO DOWN meepA. 28 days after I met the guy, I moved in.

Within a year of getting the house, my credit score went up over 100 points.

Point being: go talk with a mortgage broker.

Yeah I'm actually out there pounding the pavement looking to buy a house in the slump as well. I do fortunately have decent credit and a pretty good down payment to work with. I'm thinking of myself as 'Vulture' Capital.

We were originally thinking of Building a kick-meep custom home on the land I have now but with the prices of existing homes falling so hard we have decided it is probably a good idea to buy in a good neighborhood and hold for a few years instead. Houses that were $500K+ are now $250 and still falling in my area but of course we were one of the most inflated markets in the country.

I don't know what your strategy is but knowing I have financing lined up I'm going in with offers well below asking in a completely arrogant fashion. It is a bloodbath out there right now and the banks know it all to well. If there is a Shortsale or foreclosure Don't be afraid to grab your meep and lowball them. The Fact of the matter is the banks are marking all their questionable loans at 50% - 30% of the original loan price so why would you want to pay them more? You can usually find the price paid for a house from the County Tax office.

Here is the kickass house I'm Not building :(

Hmmm I'll try again

They'll be asking for a stool sample next from you. Just want to make sure you are prepared for that because that's the kind of thoughtful person I am. Keep baggies on hand.

Seriously, dent is right on - get with a Mortgage Broker

oh and don't forget to meeping VOTE!!!

Umm, mortgage brokers will have a pretty tough time finding a loan for someone with bad credit. Thus, the whole subprime thing. Investors would much rather invest their monies in sure returns, even over the mortgage rate that the OP would get offered (perhaps in the neighborhood of 7 - 9%, due to bad credit and the current state of meep).

Just think about it, who the meep, in this financial pinch, would loan cash money to a potential deadbeat (no offense), when they could lend it to a person/entity with good credit. Short supply of lendable cash money, means that the least worthy will be the least likely to see that cash.

Unfortunately, that is where our OP falls.

I do wish him the best of luck, but just bad timing.

I do appreciate the help and advise so far folks, I'm going to keep on it and with a lot of hard work and a little luck I can get things rolling. But that place it was looking at sure was sweet, 1.5 acres and a private pond to boot.

Perhaps next time.

Any relation to Jack Nance, truenative?

"Umm, mortgage brokers will have a pretty tough time"

That's their job. There's plenty of loans designed specifically for people with meepty credit histories who have shown that they are responsible (of course your meep has to be fixed beforehand) and people with zero history, like an FHA loan.

Dent,

No, no... you have me wrong. Of course it's a MB slimeball's job to procure a loan for their high risk client, but the chances of that happening are proportionate to the amount of cash available for said risky loan. And since cash has dried up, good luck in finding that loan.

I'm sure that you just have been a bit too busy to been keeping up with the state of US economics/lending to have adjusted to the current situation.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/24/smallbusiness/small_biz_credit_freeze.smb/index.htm?postversion=2008092422