Product Description

This is a banker's worst nightmare--a book that tells you how to live without being enslaved to financial institutions. Chelsea Green has produced a formidable series of books on innovative shelter. But every alternative building strategy, no matter how low-cost or environmentally benign, requires a complementary financial strategy. the accepted path is to go hat-in-hand to a big financial institution, such as a bank, to borrow a lump sum that is repaid over many years. by the time the loan is repaid, the homeowner will have paid several times the original amount in interest. The literal meaning of "mortgage" is "death pledge." Author Rob Roy is offering an escape route from a lifetime of indentured servitude. Mortgage-Free! Radical Strategies for Home Ownership 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; * Learning to take a long-term perspective on your family's crucial economic decisions, avoiding debt and modern-day serfdom.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #288539 in Books
• Published on: 1998-03-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

From Amazon.com
The origins of the word "mortgage" are Old French and translate roughly to "death pledge." Rob Roy takes a radical approach here to help the reader understand how mortgages work; explains clearly how, if you have a mortgage already, you can maximize your equity sooner and save tons of money; and how, if just starting the process of acquiring a home for yourself, there are clear alternatives to a standard bank mortgage that will save you massive amounts of money, time, and financial headaches.

Roy covers the following subjects in detail: the grubstake--the essential financial asset that will stay with you for life; how to find land that you love and can afford; how to seize control of the house-building process; how to clarify and simplify your ideas of what you really need; and how to construct a low-cost home. Included in the book is Roy's own personal story of mortgage-free living, as well as those of others. His wry humor makes for an entertaining read, and his ideas, examples, and advice are clear-headed, logical, and hopeful. His financial calculations and charts are clear and imminently sensible while being real eye-openers. Your banker may not want you to read this radical book, but it amounts to a guided, rational plan for home ownership and financial liberation, and will no doubt soon be considered a classic. --Mark A. Hetts

From Library Journal
In this updated version of Money-Saving Strategies for the Owner/Builder (1981), Roy offers his personal experiences and those of others who have successfully achieved the status of living mortgage-free. It is obvious that he has been greatly influenced by Henry David Thoreau, whom he refers to as "the father of the owner/builder movement in America." Roy stresses that to become an owner/ builder requires a high energy level, good health, and the motivation to educate oneself about home building. In addition, he instructs readers in acquiring a "grubstake" (his term for accumulating enough savings to purchase land and build on it), constructing a temporary shelter near the site of the permanent home, becoming one's own contractor, using alternative building materials, and building small. Roy's ideas are radical but worth investigating if your desire is to live mortgage-free. His book is clearly written and offers an extensive annotated bibliography of numerous resources and amortization tables.ABellinda Wise, Nassau Community Coll. Lib., Garden City, NY
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Rob Roy know what it means to live mortgage-free. As director of Earthwood Building School, he has instructed many in the arts of natural building, renewable energy, and homesteading. He is also the author of The Complete Book of Underground Houses, The Complete Book of Cordwood Masonry Housebuilding, and The Sauna as well as Stone Circles: A Modern Builder's Guide to the Megalithic Revival. He gets around. Rob and his family live in West Chazy, New York. Artist Malcolm Wells is also legendary in alternative building circles for his many books and articles about earth shelters and "gentle architecture." He lives in Brewster, Massachusetts. For more information, please visit his website. Cost of the War in Iraq $337,285,090,440.

Customer Reviews

Don't accept the Death Pledge - there is another way
First off, this book is not for the typical American Consumer. If you can't wait for anything you want (but have to have it NOW), if you spend hours staring blankly at the Idiot Box, if you tend to accept ideas simply because everybody else accepts them, then you probably will indeed find the contents of this book to be "radical".

On the other hand, if you are independent minded, don't mind waiting for something worthwhile, can handle some discomfort, enjoy doing things with your own hands, and are completely repulsed by the idea of spending the rest of your life paying the bank for a cookie-cutter tract house, you need to read this book.

Rob Roy has long been a familiar name in the world of alternative construction methods, yet the ideas presented in this book are applicable to any style of construction, from stick-framing to whatever you can imagine. This is a distillation of Mr. Roy's many years of mortgage-free building projects. Not exactly a how-to book in the sense of the actual building itself, it is, as the title suggests, a series of strategies on how to save money and keep the bank out of your project, from finding and buying land, to building a temporary shelter, to designing & building the house itself. The second half of the book tells the stories of various folks who have actually pursued these strategies, and the various successes and pitfalls they encountered.

THIS IS A VERY EMPOWERING BOOK. While reading it you will begin to feel a rising sense of excitement as it dawns on you that YOU ACTUALLY CAN DO THIS. Visit www.cordwoodmasonry.com to order the book direct.

A Radical Idea and an Excellent Resource
Once in a while, I read a book that makes me question something I always took for granted. For example, it was Ageless Body, Timeless Mind by Deepak Chopra that showed me people don't have to grow old and brittle before they die. It was Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki that taught me what it really means to be rich. And I credit Mortgage-Free!, by Rob Roy, with being the book that proved how people can own a comfortable, beautiful home without taking out a mortgage.

I decided to read Mortgage-Free! because the title intrigued me. Little did I know that it would be such a fantastic book, or that it would relate so closely to the theme of my website, SustainableWays.com (for which this review was originally written).

I always thought that having a house was synonymous with having a mortgage. But when you really think about it, a mortgage is not much of a good deal. The author shows how most people who take out a mortgage end up paying nearly three times as much as the house they live in is worth. Even worse is the inevitable nature of debt as a work trap:

"An unholy percentage of American men and women are working largely for their houses, at jobs they would not choose were pay not the overriding consideration. I spent nearly five years at that game, surrounded by co-workers caught in the mortgage trap. My escape was made possible largely by our mortgage-free home." -Rob Roy, Mortgage-Free!

It's the author's own experiences in walking the talk that really makes this book and excellent investment. Yes, the ideas may seem outrageous, but Rob Roy makes it undeniable that they are, in fact, do-able. Not only does he describe his own 25-year success in building and owning mortgage-free homes, but he also provides a number of examples of others doing the same thing. On top of that, this book is rich with book recommendations, phone numbers, and other starting points. Basically, he covers every base so well that the only reason you'd have NOT to follow his advice is down-right laziness.

This book will best serve people who are independent, open-minded, and logical. But if you're a die-hard conformist that scoffs at anything unconvential, then this book is not for you. Even though the ideas and methods presented in Mortgage-Free! will be most useful to people living or willing to move to rural areas, anyone can benefit from the knowledge provided in this book. Even now, as I'm flipping through it, I'm continually amazed at how helpful and thorough this book really is. It touches on everything from eating well, to helping the environment, going to college, and so on. This is definitely a holistic, integrative piece of work.

Ultimately, this is a book I felt I had to buy because of its usefulness as a reference. If you read it more than once, you'll realize that Mortgage-Free! isn't really about owning a home. Even if you don't end up owning or building a house, this book will have served you well in that it'll have made you question something that you normally would've accepted. Avoiding a mortgage is just one of the many aspects of a better way to live: On your own terms.

Freedom Awaits
Far from being just another book about ways to buy real estate, Rob Roy's book 'Mortgage-Free' encompasses an entire way of life that can set you free from the oppressive, credit induced, treadmill existence that ever-increasingly dominates & enslaves people to debt & by doing so greatly decreases their quality & enjoyment of life. Rob combines Thoreauvian based economics & plain old down-to-earth common sense with wisdom gained from his many successful years of Mortgage-Free living. He offers hope, inspiration & practical, proven techniques to those who would dare to actually take charge of their own lives & realize that there are alternatives to huge indebtedness. Filled with genuinely useful information & examples, Rob reveals not only his own personal triumphs, but also mistakes he has made along his own Mortgage-Free journey & he does this in a very readable, entertaining, as well as enlightening fashion. Buy a copy or use one of Rob's own money saving techniques if you must & check with your local library- Either way I think you truly owe it to yourself to read this book before you set out on your own personal home-ownership journey. Good Luck to you all!