Bank on Your Neighbor: The Audiobook Podcast
Building wealth doesn’t have to mean Wall Street. In this exclusive audio series, Mel Dorman brings you Bank on Your Neighbor — a practical, people-first guide to seller financing. Learn how to create ethical, win-win deals rooted in relationships and strategy, and start building financial freedom right in your own community.
https://meldorman.com
Bank on Your Neighbor: The Audiobook Podcast
Bank on Your Neighbor: The Audiobook - Chapter 9
What if the real power to change our economy isn’t in Washington—or on Wall Street—but sitting right at our kitchen tables?
In this chapter, Mel pulls back the curtain on how the system was built to extract from our communities and shows why seller financing is a powerful tool to flip that script. From billionaire wealth hoarding to the redlining that shaped entire neighborhoods, she connects the dots on how we got here—and why now is the moment to act differently.
You’ll learn:
- Why traditional bank financing was never designed to serve everyday people
- How seller financing can keep wealth circulating locally instead of siphoned upward
- The difference between predatory deals and ethical, community-based ones
- Why the coming “silver tsunami” of Baby Boomer homeownership could open doors for Millennials and Gen Z buyers
This isn’t just about buying property—it’s about reclaiming power, rewriting the rules, and building wealth without waiting for permission.
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Hi, friend. I'm Mel Doman, real estate investor, former social worker, TEDx speaker and financial activist. And this, this is Bank On Your Neighbor, the podcast. You're probably here because you felt it too, that the system wasn't built for us. That building wealth shouldn't mean selling your soul to Wall Street or crossing your fingers every time a bank says no. That there has to be another way. Well, there is, and this podcast is my free gift to you. That's right. Free, no paywall, no audible subscription, no gatekeepers standing between you and the knowledge that can change your life. Because here's the truth, just because something's free doesn't mean it isn't valuable. Sometimes the most valuable things, clarity, empowerment, freedom, don't come with a price tag. They come with purpose. I created this podcast because I'm on a mission to decentralize wealth, to take power out of the hands of billionaires and put it back into our communities. Each episode is a chapter from my book Bank on Your Neighbor. Read by me. It's my way of making sure this knowledge reaches the people who need it most without a single algorithm getting in the way. We'll walk through the real strategies I use to go from dumpster diving in my twenties to building a multimillion dollar portfolio in my thirties without banks, without credit, and without compromising my values. We'll talk seller financing, community centered investing. And creative ways to build wealth that actually serve people, not exploit them. But this isn't just a podcast, it's a movement, a radical reclaiming of power, a blueprint for creating more community-minded millionaires and fewer billionaires extracting from our neighborhoods. Every chapter builds on the last, so I recommend listening in order. I'll drop links, visuals, and extra resources in the show notes to help you take action. Not just absorb information, and if something in an episode strikes a chord, send it to someone you care about. That's how we spread financial literacy. That's how we grow a movement. That's how we rise together. Welcome to Bank On Your Neighbor. Welcome to the Movement. Let's build something together, part two. Welcome to Seller Financing Chapter nine. Skip the Bank. Save your Neighborhood. We can all get more together than we can apart, and this is the way we gain power. Power is the ability to achieve purpose. Power is the ability to affect change, and we need power. Martin Luther King Jr. The summer of 2024, felt like watching a plot twist in slow motion. I stood in a packed Detroit arena, shoulder to shoulder with 14,000 strangers who somehow felt like family. We waved. Union flags, wiped, tears screamed ourselves, hoarse. We're not going back. The air was thick with sweat hope and that quiet, desperate ache you only feel when you really want to believe. Again. Outside the skyline of shuttered factories and boarded up homes told a different story. Decades of promise. Decades of being forgotten, decades of being told. Wait your turn. Help is coming. Inside Kamala Harris and Tim Walsh promised that this time would be different. They promised the middle class wouldn't be left behind and for a heartbeat, it was enough for a heartbeat. We believed. You know how the story ends. Trump won. Hope didn't die that night. It just curled up under the weight of exhaustion. But something else happened too. Something quieter, deeper. I stopped waiting. I realized something I hope you carry with you through the rest of this book. No one is coming. Not the politicians, not the billionaires, not the banks. They will make their speeches, kiss our babies, wave their flags, but the power we're looking for, it isn't up there on the stage. It's in here, in us, in our neighborhoods, in our communities, in our hands. The middle class has been waiting for decades. For a savior, maybe it's time we stop waiting and start saving ourselves. In this chapter, I'll show you how I'll explain how seller financing can rebuild what the system was never designed to protect real people, real communities, real lives. Let's get started connecting the dots. Picture this, you're at a potluck dinner. Everyone brings something to the table. Casserole, pies, maybe a bottle of wine. You're just about to dig in. When three guys show up and start piling everything onto their plates, Warren, Jeff, and Bill. They're not even pretending to be polite. Lasagna sliding into the cake, Pinot noir spilling down their arms. Meanwhile, the rest of us, 160 million people are left scraping crumbs off the tablecloth pretending we're full. At first, it's so absurd. You almost wanna laugh. And then you realize this isn't a joke. It's the American economy. In 2017, Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates held more wealth than half the US population combined. As of late 2024, the top 1% of Americans control over 31% of the nation's total wealth. While the bottom half of the country holds just 2.4%, let that sink in. Three plates still stacked sky high while the rest of us are licking the serving spoons. Except now the table's even smaller and the crumbs scarcer. And if you're thinking, well, at least they're paying taxes on all that. Bless your sweet, trusting heart. They're not. They've got a system slicker than a buttered pig at a county fair, borrowing against their assets, live large, pay nothing. Then when they die, their heirs inherit the whole tax-free empire. No problem. As Bernie Sanders so perfectly put it, this isn't capitalism, it's corporate socialism. The ultra rich get tax breaks, bailouts and loopholes. The rest of us, we get lectures about living within our means while patching holes in a sinking ship. They already abandoned for their own yachts. But how did we get here? According to economist Robert Reich, the 1970s marked a seismic shift. We moved from a stakeholder economy to a shareholder economy, and here's why that matters. In a stakeholder economy, businesses are like, well run family diners accountable to employees, customers, and suppliers. Profits are important, sure, but they're balanced with the needs of the community. Everyone has a seat at the table. Everyone matters. Enter the shareholder economy picture an ATM that spits out cash to the top 1%. CEOs now answered to shareholders who couldn't care less about the workers making their products or the communities hosting their factories. The mandate maximize shareholder wealth, whatever it takes, the casualties, layoffs slash benefits, and a tax code rigged to favor the rich. The result. Corporations are guzzling profits like frat boys at a keg party while nearly 80% of US workers live paycheck to paycheck. Walmart alone rakes in a hundred million dollars per day. That's $70,000 every minute. By the time you heard this paragraph, their fortune has grown more than most Americans make in a year. And about the stock market argument, you know the one that goes, but don't we all own stocks? Nice. Try the top 10% of Americans own 90% of the stock market, and the top 1% alone control half. It's like being told we all live in the same neighborhood while one guy owns the penthouse, and the rest of us are camping in the alley. And now that billionaire wealth has surged by 77%, a $2.2 trillion increase since the 2017 Trump GOP tax law went into effect. Stockholder capitalism has become an economic sump pump churning, siphoning wealth upward, leaving the rest of us wondering why our paychecks feel more like IOUs. The system isn't broken. It's working exactly as it was designed. So what do we do? We take the table back. What if 160 million of us teamed up against a few hundred billionaires? Could we win? What if we returned to a stakeholder model? A system where wealth circulates locally instead of spiraling into the stratosphere. That's where seller financing comes in. It cuts out Wall Street and puts power back in the hands of everyday people. In this model, the potluck stays local. The plates stay balanced, and the only losers are the big banks and the billionaires. Sounds like a feast worth fighting for, doesn't it? How we've been doing business. Let's talk about how we're supposed to buy real estate. You find a realtor. The realtor sends you to the bank. The bank asks for your pay stubs, tax returns, credit report, and maybe your blood type. If you pass their test, you get approved. Congrats now begins the scavenger hunt. Dozens of listings, multiple offers a prayer for a decent appraisal. You finally find the one, but wait. If the house doesn't appraise, you owe more cash. If the underwriter gets twitchy about your income deals dead. And don't forget, you already paid for an inspection. Maybe an appraisal thousands spent just for the chance to be told no. And somehow this is considered normal. Because it's the system we've inherited, the one where we're supposed to prove we're worthy of ownership by passing a bank's stress test. My mom used to say, just because everyone's doing it doesn't mean it's smart. Amen, mom. Here's what most people don't know. It wasn't always this way for most of American history, real estate wasn't locked behind banks and brokers. People bought property the way we do everything else in healthy communities. Person to person. They worked out the terms at the kitchen table. No gatekeepers, no mortgage insurance, no 40 page applications. Before banks got involved, seller financing was the norm. But in the early 19 hundreds, banks started to realize mortgages were a gold mine. They just needed to package the product, so they did early mortgages, required 50% down and had to be repaid within three to six years. If that sounds brutal. That's because it was real estate was a rich man's game. Then the Great Depression hit home values collapsed, foreclosure skyrocketed. Over a thousand homes were seized every day. In response, the federal government stepped in to save the housing market by reforming loans. They created the Homeowners Loan Corporation, which restructured millions of mortgages into long-term lower payment deals that stabilized the market, but not fairly. Because to determine where loans could be offered, they created maps, redlined maps, neighborhoods were rated. The ones marked in red, deemed hazardous, not because of the homes, but because of the people who lived there. Black families, immigrant communities, working class folks. The FHA and VA followed suit ensuring loans, but only in areas that banks deemed safe. Safe, of course, being code for white and wealthy. So while one side of the street got 3% down and a white picket fence, the other side got boxed out completely. The American dream wasn't about work ethic. It was about your zip code and the color of your skin. It didn't get buried by history. It got buried by profit motives, and it's time to dig it back up because the tools we need to change are financial futures. They're not sitting in a boardroom. They're sitting at our kitchen tables. Seller financing doesn't ask for perfection. It asks for partnership. It's flexible human collaborative. If the bank says no, because you're undocumented, a seller can say yes if the bank denies your loan because your job history is non-traditional, or your income is seasonal, or your credit was hit by a medical bill, a seller can say, yes, need a loan that doesn't charge interest because it violates your faith. Under traditional Islam paying or charging interest, what's called REBA is prohibited. That means Muslim buyers are often blocked from home ownership through conventional loans. But in seller financing, we can honor that. We can structure an agreement with 0% interest and a higher purchase price, allowing you to stay true to your faith and still step into ownership. No compromise, no barriers. Just dignity. Seller financing sees the person, not the paperwork. It's not about cutting corners, it's about rewriting the map. This isn't just another way to buy a house, it's a way to rewire the system from the inside out. Not everyone's going to offer it, but if you can find one seller who's open, you can rewrite your financial future. And that's exactly what we're gonna talk about next. What's the difference? So what actually makes seller financing different from getting a traditional bank loan? Let's break it down. One. Gatekeeping versus custom agreements. Traditional bank financing is like trying to get past a bouncer at an exclusive club. If your credit score, job history, or debt to income ratio doesn't meet the algorithm, the bank bouncer says no. Entry banks use a fixed formula to decide who's worthy of a loan. They don't see your resilience, they don't know your story, and they don't care if you've been paying rent on time for 10 years. If the algorithm says no, it's no. Why so strict.'cause banks aren't just evaluating you. They're creating a loan that can be sold to Wall Street. Your mortgage isn't just a contract, it's a product. And to sell it in bulk, it needs to be standardized, safe, and shrink wrapped for the secondary market. That's why everything has to fit neatly into a box with seller financing. There is no box. There's just a person sitting across the table. The seller can decide they trust your work ethic, your story, your readiness, and the two of you get to create terms that actually reflect the deal, not a spreadsheet. You decide on the interest rate, the down payment, the loan duration, whether payments are interest only, amortized or custom. No underwriter, no appraisal drama, no credit bureaucracy, no begging for permission. And here's where it really stings. These lending rules block many responsible people from buying homes. Take renters, for example. Renters often pay on times for years building equity for their landlords. But according to bank guidelines, those same renters might not qualify to buy the very home they've been paying for all along. Meanwhile, my own property manager told me she's a first generation immigrant whose family was only able to buy their childhood home because of seller financing. Traditional bank financing excludes undocumented people from gaining credit or buying a home. Our undocumented neighbors pay taxes and build our homes, but aren't allowed to buy one for themselves using a bank loan. Even for those who do qualify, banks often require a 20% down payment unless the buyer purchases mortgage insurance. Insurance. That fun fact protects the bank in case of foreclosure, not the buyer. And while the bank is protecting itself, the buyer is stuck, either draining their savings for a massive down payment or paying extra for that insurance. Either way, these rules create more barriers to home ownership. Two cost barriers versus cost savings. Bank loans come with a long receipt. Origination fees, credit checks, appraisals, lender title insurance and application fees, often totaling one to 2% of the purchase price. On a $500,000 home, that's 5,000 to $10,000 in sunk costs before you even move in. With seller financing, the costs are usually limited to an attorney or escrow fee for writing up the promissory note often just a few hundred bucks. That's it. Every dollar saved is a dollar that can go into your reserves, your renovation budget, or your next deal. Three. Wealth extraction versus wealth circulation. Here's the part most people miss when you borrow from a bank, your monthly interest payments don't just disappear. They flow out of your neighborhood and into a hedge fund spreadsheet. That money pays corporate bonuses, fuels investor profits, and vanishes into financial markets that have nothing to do with your life. Now, scale that up, tens of millions of people paying hundreds or thousands of dollars per month. Collectively, we send over$400 billion a year in mortgage interest to institutional lenders. That's more than Elon Musk is worth every single year. Now imagine that money staying local. Imagine paying interest to a neighbor, a retiree, a small business owner, that monthly check could fund their retirement, cover medical bills, or put their grandkids through school. That's not just interest. That's reinvestment. Seller financing keeps money circulating within communities. Instead of being siphoned into Wall Street, it waters the local garden instead of draining it. Think of seller financing like a garden. To grow good quality food, we first need fertile soil, and by fertile soil, I mean having plenty of equity in our homes to tap into when we need it most. When a buyer uses a bank loan, each monthly mortgage payment sends wealth out of the community, like nutrients being stripped from the soil. But when we lend our equity directly to one another through seller financing those nutrients, and that wealth stays rooted in our neighborhoods, four. Standardization versus flexibility. Banks love formulas, but life doesn't follow formulas. Maybe you just started a new business or don't have two years of tax returns. Maybe your credit took a hit after a divorce. Maybe your income is seasonal. In a bank's eyes, that's risky. In a seller's eyes, that's negotiable. Seller financing makes room for the nuance that institutional lending erases. It replaces blanket rules with real conversations. It brings back humanity to see how we assess Risk and reward. And flexibility doesn't mean recklessness. It means discernment when done Ethically, seller financing lets us design deals with shared benefit and mutual protection. It's not about gaming the system, it's about writing a better one. Here are few differences to compare. In seller financing, interest rates are negotiated, but in bank financing, interest rates are predetermined by market conditions and lending rules. They're not based on the individuals in seller financing. The length of the loan term is also negotiated, whereas banks offer 15 or 30 year loans typically in seller financing. The loan down payment size is also negotiated. Whereas bank financing, the down payment required is usually set between 20 and 25%, and any smaller amount requires monthly mortgage insurance to protect the lender with seller financing. The rules are flexible for approving the buyer, but with bank financing there are rigid predetermined rules that ensure the resale value of the product to protect the lender. In seller financing, there's low closing costs, roughly one to $2,000. With bank financing, there's high closing costs, usually one to 2% of the purchase price. With seller financing, there is high accessibility, whereas bank financing, there is limited accessibility. With seller financing, there's less regulated industry, which creates flexibility between the buyer and seller, whereas with bank financing, it is a highly regulated industry for mortgage lenders to prevent discrimination. In seller financing, creative and collaborative deal structures encouraged in order to protect the buyer and seller. Whereas in bank financing, there are rigid predetermined rules that ensure the loan resale value is protected by the lender. Seller financing, the loan interest goes to the community member. Whereas in bank financing, the loan interest goes to institutional lenders, hedge funds, and Wall Street. And lastly, in seller financing, it is relationship driven, whereas bank financing, it is profit driven. So what's the real difference? Bank lending is designed to serve the institution, and seller financing is designed to serve the people. Bank loans follow a formula. Seller financing follows a relationship. One takes your money outta the community. The other helps it grow roots. This isn't just about getting a loan, it's about choosing which economy you want to feed. And it's about remembering. We're not stuck, we're not waiting. We are fully capable of building new systems. Deal by deal neighbor. Buy neighbor. Why now? In a world that feels increasingly divided, not only politically but economically and generationally, it's easy to feel like the middle class is being quietly erased. You've heard the stories. Maybe you're living one millennials burdened by student debt boomers sitting on equity rich homes with nowhere to go Gen Z, wondering if they'll ever afford to buy anything at all. Meanwhile, corporate profits soar and banks tighten their grip. But under the surface of this bleak narrative is something powerful, a convergence of need and opportunity. The American housing market is at a tipping point. Prices are sky high. Interest rates have doubled since 2021, and institutional investors are buying up entire neighborhoods. According to Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies, home prices have reached 5.3 times the national median income, the highest ratio ever recorded. While millennials and Gen Z grind out side hustles and hold off on home ownership, many baby boomers are sitting on homes they no longer need but can't afford to sell. Why? Because 40% of all mortgages were locked in during 2020 to 2021 when interest rates were at record lows. Those homeowners are now golden handcuffed to their properties, stuck with a 3% loan they can't afford to replace with today's 7% rates, even if they want to downsize, the math just doesn't work. At the same time, we're witnessing something historic. The largest wealth transfer in American history over the next 10 to 15 years, the generation that owns most of the nation's housing stock boomers will retire, downsize, or pass their assets on. It's called the silver tsunami for a reason. But here's the challenge. Many boomers are equity rich and cashflow poor. They don't wanna take a tax hit. They don't want to become landlords, and they definitely don't want to get stuck with a high rate mortgage on their next home. Seller financing solves all of that. Imagine this, A millennial or Gen Z buyer shut out a bank due to student loans. Self-employment, or low credit score approaches a boomer who owns their home free and clear. Instead of listing the home paying realtor fees and risking a busted appraisal, the seller offers financing directly. The buyer gets access to home ownership. The seller gets steady monthly income, favorable tax treatment, and peace of mind. No banks, no gatekeepers, no wasted time. This isn't a pipe dream. This is how millions of real estate deals were done in the 1970s and eighties when interest rates were 18% or more, and bank lending had all but seized up. Back then, seller financing wasn't creative. It was necessary. Neighbors found a way because the whole system wasn't offering one. Sound familiar. Today we're facing nearly identical situations, high interest rates, low housing supply, economic anxiety, deep distrust, and institutions, a cultural craving for more connection, more dignity, more control. Which is why seller financing isn't just practical. It's philosophical. It says we don't have to wait for rates to fall. We don't have to hope for politicians to figure it out. We don't have to delay our lives because the system won't accommodate them. We can act now. We can partner across generations. We can direct wealth out of Wall Street and into our communities. In 2024 alone, over 90,000 seller finance deals were recorded accounting more than $30 billion. In private mortgage notes. Texas alone saw more than 22,000. In other words, this isn't a fringe strategy. It's a quietly thriving movement, hiding in plain sight. And when we look back years from now, we'll see that this moment, the economic pinch, the generational overlap, the hunger for something better. It wasn't a crisis. It was an opening, a crack in the wall where something new could grow. What's in it for the seller? The most common question I hear when I talk about seller financing is, but how do you know the buyer won't screw you over? It's a fair concern. Trusting someone you've just met, especially with your biggest asset, can feel like jumping out of a plane and hoping a parachute opens. But here's the irony. We trust institutions that have failed us time and again, more readily than we trust people in our own communities. We trust banks even though they caused the 2008 financial collapse. We trust credit card companies even though they profit off our hardship. We trust mortgage brokers even when they bury us in fine print. But a neighbor, a person, a relationship that feels risky. This hesitation isn't our fault. It's the natural result of living in a society that has prioritized systems over relationships, speed over nuance and profit over people. We've been taught to trust logos instead of each other, and that disconnection has cost us not just financially, but emotionally. But here's the good news, trust doesn't have to be blind when seller financing is done, right? It's not about faith, it's about structure. It's about creating a deal that works for both parties and protects both parties. Later in the book, I'll walk you through exactly how to do that, how to vet a buyer, how to draft a contract, how to secure the deal with a promissory note and deed of trust just like a bank would, because seller financing isn't charity. It's smart business. Let's break it down. Say your seller with a home that's paid off or nearly so. You could sell it outright, pay capital gains tax, and park your money in a savings account, earning 1.5%, or you could become the bank. You could offer financing to a buyer and earn six to 9% interest on your equity every single month. Let's run the numbers on an amortized loan loan amount, $500,000 interest rate, 7% term 30 years. Total interest earned $697,544. That's more than the sale price itself, just for choosing monthly income over a lump sum. And unlike being a landlord, you're not unclogging toilets or chasing rent. You're collecting passive income secured by the property itself. If the buyer defaults, you have the legal right to foreclose, just like the bank bant. In other words, you are protected. And here's what makes it even better. You're not just earning interest, you're creating a legacy. If you're helping someone step into ownership, you're keeping wealth local, you're modeling what it looks like to do business with values. It's not just a transaction, it's transformation. The problem with amortization, let's talk about one of the sneakiest tools in the traditional finance playbook, amortization. If you've ever looked at a mortgage statement and thought, wait, how am I still barely making a dent in the balance? You're not imagining things. You are looking at amortization in action. Here's how it works. In a standard 30 year mortgage, most of your early payments go towards interest, not the loan itself. That means for years, sometimes a decade, you are not actually building much equity. You are just paying rent to the bank under a fancier name. Let's break it down with real numbers. Loan amount, $500,000. Interest rate, 7% loan term, 30 years monthly payment, $3,327. Now, here's the part that stings in the first five years, you'll pay about $170,000 in interest. And how much principle will you have paid off just $30,000. That means $200,000 has left your bank account and you've only bought yourself $30,000 of ownership. If you sell or refinance early, like most people do, all that money gone. You just rented your own house from the bank. This is how banks win every time. But here's the good news. Seller financing breaks this mold because with seller financing, you and the seller get to design your own terms, including how payments work, one option, interest only payments. Let's compare. Seller finance loan, $500,000 interest rate, 7% interest only. Payments $2,916. Principal paid in five years, $0. Cash kept in your pocket, $411 per month, or nearly $25,000 over five years. That's $25,000 you can use to improve the property, invest elsewhere, or just breathe a little easier. And the seller, they're still earning solid monthly income without the risk or hassle of being a landlord. You're not just saving money, you are designing a financial strategy that works for your life, not some bank's portfolio. That's the power of writing your own terms. What about an underlying mortgage? Let's talk about something that trips people up all the time. How can a seller finance a buyer if they still have a mortgage on their home? It's one of those questions that makes you squint and go, wait, is this even allowed? And the answer is yes, absolutely. Let's say the seller still owes$200,000 on their mortgage. You agree to buy the property for $500,000. At closing, you or your lender pay off the 200,000 to clear the seller's existing mortgage. The seller then finances the remaining 300,000 directly to you. Boom. Seller financing with an underlying mortgage. You just used a mix of bank funds and seller financing to make the deal happen. Why does this matter? Because instead of needing a$500,000 loan, you only need to qualify for a 200,000 loan. That's a smaller loan, lower down payment, and a better shot at approval. Especially for buyers with non-traditional income, new businesses, or credit hiccups. Let's break it down even further. Traditional loan route 5% down on a$500,000 home equals $25,000 down payment. Hybrid seller financing, route 5% down on 200,000 is only a $10,000 down payment. That's $15,000 still in your pocket. So why would a seller agree to this? Because they win too. They get their mortgage paid off. They get to keep equity working for them. They collect interest on that$300,000 balance, and they often defer capital gains taxes in the process. Here's an example. Let's say the seller gets a new loan at 7% interest to buy their next home. They finance you at 9% interest on the remaining 300,000. That's a 2% profit margin on money that used to be locked in their walls even better. If the terms are interest only for a while, they delay paying taxes on the principal income and keep more of their money working for them. In plain English, the buyer wins because they get a lower down payment. Easier financing and creative leverage. The seller wins with the monthly income tax advantages and a strong return, the bank loses, but don't worry, they've had a good run. This hybrid method is just the beginning. Later in this book, I'll show you even more powerful strategies like the wrap note, lease options, and subject to purchases. And if those sound like a foreign language right now, don't worry. You'll be fluent soon enough. A tool to wield with care. When you make a mortgage payment to a traditional bank, that money doesn't just disappear. It travels. It flows up the ladder, it feeds a machine built to extract wealth, not grow it. Some of it pays salaries, some of it becomes profit, but a whole lot of it ends up in the portfolios of hedge funds, pension plans, and institutional investors who have never set foot in your neighborhood. You pay they profit. That's the model. Now, zoom out. Tens of millions of Americans are doing this every month, sending a slice of their income to massive financial institutions. It adds up big time. This isn't just real estate, it's economic justice in action. Let's be clear. Seller financing isn't a magic wand. It's a tool, and like any tool, it can be used to build or to harm. A surgeon uses a scalpel to save lives in the wrong hands. That same blade can do real damage. Seller financing is no different. When done Ethically, it creates opportunity, wealth, and trust between people who might otherwise never do business together, but when abused, it becomes just another trap. Here's how that trap works. A desperate buyer is offered seller financing, but the terms are toxic. Huge down payment, sky high adjustable interest rate, short term loan, maybe three to five years, massive balloon payment. At the end, the buyer is hopeful, under resourced and uneducated about what they're signing. They move in, they try to make it work, but eventually the payment becomes impossible or they can't refinance in time. So what happens? The seller forecloses keeps the home, keeps the down payment, and starts the cycle all over again with someone new. This isn't theoretical. It's happening in working class neighborhoods, immigrant communities, and communities of color, and that's why some people here, seller financing and flinch, because for them it has been a ladder. It's been a weapon. That's why education matters. That's why you matter, because when you learn how to structure, seller finance deals the right way. Fair, clear and win-win. You help rebuild the trust that others have broken. You become a builder, not a predator, a problem solver, not a profiteer. In later chapters, I'll show you exactly how to vet a seller or buyer, protect both parties with contracts, spot red flags before they cost you, and create long-term partnerships, not short-term transactions, because this isn't just about what's legal, it's about what's right. Seller Financing is powerful and like anything powerful, it deserves your care, your attention, and your highest ethics. Let's not throw out the tool. Let's learn how to use it well. Seller financing can be part of the change We're all craving. It offers us something. Wall Street never will a chance to build wealth without extraction. A chance to say yes to each other, a chance to co-create freedom. We don't have to wait for market conditions to shift. We don't have to hope. Interest rates magically drop. We don't need permission from institutions that have ignored us for decades. We need each other. That's it. That's the strategy because when we build deals with creativity and courage, when we choose collaboration over competition, we don't just buy property. We reshape what wealth even means. We leave behind the lie. That profit has to come at someone else's expense. We walk away from the fear that there's only one seat at the table. We build a new table, one big enough for us all, and it all starts with one conversation. In the next chapter, I'll teach you exactly how to find that conversation. We'll walk step by step through how to identify a seller who's open to this kind of deal and how to approach them in a way that builds trust, creates alignment, and opens the door to something neither of you could have done alone. By the end of this next section, you won't just believe in seller financing. You'll be ready to go find your first win-win deal.