The Great Ganesha

What if you’re a broke, starving grad student? And what if suddenly you have a burning desire to buy a villa in Florence? What do you do? Well, that’s easy. All you have to do is get someone else to pay for it!

Before you start throwing tomatoes at your computer screen, let me just say: I’m not kidding. Julie Hampton actually did that. When she was a grad student, she figured she needed $80,000 to buy a villa in Florence. Obviously, she didn’t have the money. So what did she do?

She went to the local office of the Small Business Administration and told a volunteer adviser that she wanted to finance the purchase largely by persuading 60 people to pay $1,000 each in exchange for three weeks at the villa. [link]

A novel idea. And after finding someone who wanted to sell a house there (via a friend), a quick trip to Italy, $2,300 from her college fund as binder money, a consult with a lawyer for the paperwork, creating a color brochure, and placing an NYT classifieds ad, she managed to get the down payment.

And less than a year after that, the house was hers.

She wound up paying $82,000 — including $12,000 from a retirement account, a $6,000 loan from her parents and $8,000 in loans from her credit union. About half the 60 subscribers came from the Phoenix area, and half from responses to the ad. [link]

Once everyone finishes their time staying (which will be in 2007), she finally gets her house. Not bad, huh?