We're living in a nice house at the moment. Not in the best condition, since the roof leaks, there are electrical problems, damp problems, mold problems and all manner of things. It's run down, filthy, chicken shit everywhere, and quite an eyesore, but it would be a great investment opportunity for us if we had the chance.

We were renting from a woman who'd told us she'd be selling it to us as a short sale, and that we should wait while it was all worked out.

Turned out she was just conning us, and wasn't paying the mortgage all the time we were paying her rent (and collecting rent on her behalf) and finally it went into foreclosure.

But we found out it was foreclosing, stopped paying rent from the moment it was going through, and haven't paid any rent since November 2013. She took us to court, lost, since she couldn't prove she was the owner, and a couple of weeks ago the place was auctioned.

The bank bought it back for $465,000.

So our hope of buying it at auction was wrecked, and we just have to wait until someone comes round and tells us we need to leave, which could be at any time.

Kele attempted to buy a three bed place near here for $189,000 a couple of months ago, but was turned down for the mortgage. We've subsequently been looking at other ways to get a mortgage, and have more recently been looking into buying a condo and getting owner financing.

Problem is the condos aren't HFA approved, which means it's impossible to get a mortgage, and the interest the sellers are asking for is 10%, which means the repayments are much higher than through a bank at something like 4%

The only advantage is that the condos are cheap. Some are under $50K, and three bed places are only $65K ish.

So we'll see. We might be able to find something. Hopefully we'll get one of the condos for $65K, and pay it off within a few years.

But we shall see...

I heard today that someone bought one of the condos we're looking at and still managed to get a loan from a local bank. I'll be speaking to the bank later today, or so someone told me.

I'm also looking at ways to jump through the kinds of hoops that it seems people have to jump through to get a condo. Here's a good link:  http://www.bankrate.com/finance/mortgages/how-to-jump-through-condo-loan-hoops.aspx