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Karen McClaflin flips houses, and she's good at it.
She sees damaged and neglected properties as diamonds in the rough. She buys them, guts them and makes them livable again.
She's adding a new twist to her home-flipping business, Home Source Partners, Inc. She will carry the financing on a house for a buyer for up to two years. Buyers can get into one of her houses, typically worth about $175,000, with the equivalent of a security deposit and a first-month's rent. After two years, the buyers will have a mortgage history that should qualify them for permanent financing. And then Home Source Partners is out of the picture, McClaflin said.
"We figured the best way for an investor, like me, to buy a house is to know you can sell it," she said.
So far the formula is working.
Since January, when McClaflin launched Home Source Partners, she has sold six houses. Three are under contract to be sold, and she has four under renovation.
"We are turning up the flame to increase that -- to double that," she said. "I have a list of 20 people right now waiting to get into a house....