Ellington

"We have an offer on your house," the caller said. If I had been selling my house, that would have been happy news. The problem was that I was renting my house, and an offer meant that I would have to move out at the end of my lease term, a mere 10 months away.

That was April 2000. I had moved into the condo on the reservoir only two months earlier. It wasn't big, but it was bigger than any of the myriad apartments I had lived in over the years, and about twice the size of the one I had recently vacated. My feet still hurt from packing, moving and unpacking, and I was anticipating delivery of my new couch. I felt like I'd finally arrived.

The phone call put me into a panic, and then into a frenzy of activity. I was not going to move again in 10 months—no way, no how. And, as the people who know me best know well, when I make up my mind about something, I miraculously transform into that hard place—in direct opposition to the immovable object.

"I was told I had the right of first refusal," I told my caller, which meant that I had first dibs on the place. My inner critic spoke up immediately: "Are you crazy? You can't buy a house. You have no savings." But by the time I hung up the phone, I had committed $1,000 earnest money, which I would have to deliver that afternoon. It also meant that I would have to find financing—a feat that seemed impossible.

The first thing I did was walk down the hall to a co-worker who had been in real estate. "How do I get a mortgage with nothing down?" He gave me a name and number. Next, I wrote an e-mail to all of my friends and family. "Say a prayer to the mortgage gods," I wrote, and briefly explained my circumstances. Just two months earlier I had sent them all photos of the view from my balcony.

Long story short, things simply fell into place. I had paid off a car recently, and that, plus my income and work history, qualified me for an insanely high-interest mortgage, without putting a penny down. All the while, the "experts" said it couldn't be done.

I signed the closing papers roughly four weeks from the time I received that phone call. Subsequently, the property owners worked out a deal with my mortgage company allowing them to offer units to buyers with "no money down." Go figure. It was the power of intention, pure and simple. Intention, combined with right actions are an unbeatable combination.