I bought my first house in my very early 20’s. I had been transferred to Murray, KY where I worked for Paschall Truck Lines . After being there 8 months I was promoted to VP and went looking around for a house to buy.

There was some new construction not far from where I was renting. I approached the builder who was a friend of my boss. He was actually at the site working on my soon to be new home. It was a small 3 bedroom tucked away at the end of a new addition. The walls weren’t even up yet and he was putting down the sub-floor.

We talked for about an hour and settled on a price of $42,000. Not bad for a new house but it was nearly 30 years ago. I needed $4200 for a down payment and didn’t have it, I only had about 2/3 of that and the house would be coming without appliances so I needed cash for that expense as well. I decided the time wasn’t right and went back to the builder to tell him I couldn’t pull it off.

He took it in stride and as I was walking away from the beginnings of someone’s new house he stopped me. He said tell you what kid. I’ll loan you the entire down payment and you take your money and buy appliances. Hell, I had only known the guy two days. Then again people in Kentucky are a bit different and back then people were generally different all together.

We signed a promissory note and he wrote me a check. I went to the bank and deposited it and waited a few days for it to clear. I then marched off to the same bank and applied for a mortgage. They asked if I had the down payment and I said yes, it’s in my savings account. They checked the account and within about 30 minutes they approved the mortgage.

Was I obligated to tell them where the money came from? No. It was no longer his money, it was mine. He now had a promissory note in exchange for handing me $4200. And no, there was not a question on the loan application that asked if I had borrowed the down payment.

At the end of the year I received a $5000 bonus and paid it off.

Posted by AWB

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 24th, 2007 at 3:46 pm and is filed under City & County Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.