Mortgage Free!, Second Edition: Innovative Strategies for Debt-Free Home Ownership (Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: stump house, quitclaim deed, full grubstake, Chelsea Green, United States, The Hill (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

As a wave of foreclosures sweeps the country, many people are giving up hope for owning a home of their own. They have good reason to turn their backs on the banks, but not on their dreams. In this revised edition of Mortgage Free!, Rob Roy offers a series of escape routes from enslavement to financial institutions, underscored by true stories of intrepid homeowners who have put their principles into action.

From back-to-the-land homesteads to country homes, here is a complete guide to strategies that allow you to own your land and home, free and clear, without the bank. Included is detailed advice about:

• Clarifying and simplifying your notions of what’s necessary;
• Finding land that you love and can afford;
• Taking control of the house-building process, for the sake of sanity and pleasure;
  and
• Learning to take a long-term perspective on your family’s crucial economic decisions, avoiding debt and modern-day serfdom.

About the Author

Rob Roy knows what it means to live mortgage free. As director of Earthwood Building School since 1981, he has instructed many in the arts of natural building, and renewable energy. He is also the author of Earth-Sheltered Houses, Cordwood Building, Timber Framing for the Rest of Us, The Sauna, and Stone Circles. Rob and his family live in West Chazy, New York.

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing; 2 Revised edition (November 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1603580654
• ISBN-13: 978-1603580656
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #447,295 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars DIY: for real., March 6, 2009

By	Teacher Mikal "mechanismbusboy" (Berkeley, CA) - See all my reviews

Well, I just finished Mortgage Free! and I'm pumped more than ever to build that timber frame in the mountains. I couldn't be a more accurate target audience for author Rob Roy. I'm a late twenties art teacher and woodworker (and ex-carpenter/blacksmith) that perpetually annoys my friends and family with H.D. Thoreau, Wendell Berry, Neil Postman, and E.F. Schumacher passages. I'm married, have a decent "grubstake" (savings for land and house) no children, and limitless energy.

This book is probably the first real estate/building/economic philosophy book that I've read in my short years that truly aligns with my own thinking. It has nothing to do with the TV nonsense of flipping homes, buying and selling foreclosures or short sales to get rich, or how to be a landlord in the city. Its greatest merit is the argument that we can live this life unchained to the typical work-a-day existence of mortgages, corporate ladder climbing and consumer/energy gluttony. This very merit, although a proven path even ten years ago, is untested in our current lousy and price-bloated economy. Roy's main thrust is that we should avoid the death pledge of the mortgage at pretty much any cost-and here I agree. What this book really needs though, (indeed lacks) for me, are tangible case studies and numbers that come even close to the typical prices of anywhere else except the Upstate NY area where the author is familiar. I live in California, but I've also lived in Chicago and Denver. Prices in the West are often ten times the updated prices you find in Mortgage Free! The advantages that couples in the late 60s and early 70s had with open space, low prices, and inheritances, are unknown to me. For the first five years of my working life I made nearly the same wage as my father twenty five years before at the same age... except that everything costs ten, twenty times the prices of his day and the joke of unlimited growth of property values is coming to a rude end.

Despite these drawbacks, Mortgage Free! is well worth the money for its honest and sensible approach, clarity and style of the writing, and truthful, enlightened position on energy and economy. My determination to make it to those green mountain pastures in the Sierra Nevada has much deeper roots than this book alone...(and so should yours). So, you should buy Mortgage Free!, read it, and put its good message to work. Thanks Rob.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A guide to breaking free of the bank's grasp on one's finances, February 9, 2009

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

When five or six or even more figures in debt, getting out of it seems impossible. "Mortgage Free!: Innovative Strategies for Debt-Free Home Ownership" is a guide to breaking free of the bank's grasp on one's finances, and conquering a plaguing mortgage that all too often dominates an American's life. Rob Roy has a huge selection of tips and advice for digging one's way out of debt, outlining what's truly necessary in one's life, smart shopping in the homeowner's market, planning for the long term, and so much more. Anyone plotting buying a home needs "Mortgage Free!".