Everyone needs to have a fun or interesting first real estate deal, and mine is magical. When I was 24 (in 1974) I had just started work as and electrician in the SF Bay Area, CA in the suburbs to the east. My wife and I were expecting a child in about 7 months and we were living in what I would call a "rat hole" of a rental. This hovel was a 2/1/1 whose only redeeming feature was that it backed up to open ranch land with great vistas and sunsets. As a matter of course I went to work each day and hung out with older, higher paid and longer service workers and they would constantly talking about their 3 or 4 bedroom homes with all of the amenities. I said to myself and my wife: "I want some of that!" She agreed (between drips from the leaking roof). So, I had just read Tony Robbins and Napolean Hill about setting goals, visualizing and believing in manifesting, so we acted on this immediately. Our first step was to ask my Dad for assistance with a small down payment, as I could afford the monthly and pay him back. No problem for a man of his income, right? Wrong! He said the most important phrase that has always encouraged me since: "You can save the down payment and make the monthly on your own, this will give you much greater sense of satisfaction than my giving you the money." After shedding a few tears, I realized that he was right and that this would be a true test, to manifest our own home. We wrote down every characteristic of the house that we wanted, started looking in the local paper and calling real estate agents to find us our "dream home". We finally snagged a scruffy mid-aged agent, a woman, who came by and asked right inside the door: "How much do you have to put down?" We said, "Nothing." She looked at us as if we have just shot her in the foot, but when we handed her our paper with the list of all of requirements for the house and sincerely asked for this type of house, a look came over her that I will never forget, it was like we had just handed her a list of groceries and she just needed to go to the store and bring them back. She said, "I'll see what I can do". Within two weeks she called one late afternoon and said she needed to see us immediately at our place, because she had a deal that was exactly what were interested in. She arrived several minutes later, piled us in her junker car and drove less than a block down our street and came to the cutest 2/1/1 on a 1/3 of an acre of land, just what we had visualized. The best part, and this dates me, it was only $300 per month, interest only, with a balloon in 2 yrs. We couldn't sign the contract fast enough. This was the exact embodiment of the list that we had made for our first home. This was the first of my many miracles. More to follow...

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