Helter Skelter

Dowty was paying me a salary of $34000 a year, which from my UK level of a year earlier was about thirty percent higher than the eleven thousand pounds that APPH paid. The subtle differences were not quite apparent to me at the time, but my time at APPH had given me four weeks paid vacation, whereas Dowty was two (I will have to check, it may have been less) and in addition my mortgage in the UK was about half what the rent was.

So, we felt squeezed.

Remax Dave laid out his battle plan on our $270 auction table, a table that became synonymous with real estate deals over the next twenty or more years. This however, was number one in Canada and it felt very different than anything we had experienced.

I could smell the fear.

The lowdown, was that we would have to bare our financial souls to see if we qualified for a bank mortgage, which was probably unlikely, so the alternate would be a Trust Company mortgage, brokered through a mysterious third party. The insignificant detail that we did not have enough for a deposit was greeted with the knowing look of a man who could work the system.

The $34k salary indicated that we could qualify for a $155k mortgage, so with 5% down we would be looking for an eight thousand deposit, plus legal fees, plus "other" fees so about ten thousand would do it.

That was about eight thousand more than we had.

And so it began.