How to get a home loan with less-than-stellar credit

U.S. News & World Report Money published a story on January 30, 2015, about ways to get around a dismal credit rating if you want to buy a house.  Mike Orr, director of the Center for real Estate Theory and Practice, weighed in on seller financing.

From U.S. News & World Report Money, February 19, 2015:

“Seller financing is occasionally done when the seller's own mortgage has been paid off, or if it can be paid off using the buyer's down payment. Instead of paying the bank a mortgage payment every month, you're paying the seller directly, often until your credit is restored enough to where you can refinance with a traditional mortgage lender. "The big downside is that you will usually need a substantial down payment with seller financing," Orr says. "Sellers need to see that you have some skin in the game and that you will lose it if they have to foreclose."

About Mike Orr:

In 2012 Mike Orr was appointed Director of the Center for Real Estate Theory and Practice at the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. Orr left the computer industry and California to focus on Arizona real estate in 2002. He obtained an Arizona real estate license in 2005 and started studying real estate statistics the same year.

Orr partnered with the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service and Information Market LLC in 2008 to create the Cromford Report, which provides daily real estate market insights for realtors and investors covering the Greater Phoenix residential market. Orr holds a Masters Degree in Mathematics from the University of Oxford in England and spent 31 years in the computer industry, working for IBM, Amdahl Corporation, Splash Technology and the Santa Cruz Operation.