Belmont Condominiums

Q: I am in Chapter 7 bankruptcy and will receive my discharge at the end of July. I'm losing my house and car in the bankruptcy. What will be the best way for me to finance a used car with a bankruptcy on my credit? I will be moving into an apartment.

A: I'm sorry that you've had such severe financial troubles. I hope that your bankruptcy will allow you to have a fresh start. But, it won't happen immediately. It will take years for your credit history to normalize and your credit score to rise.

In the meantime, you may have a lot of trouble financing a car right now. You can shop around, but a lot of what you'll find will depend on how low your credit score is. Your credit score will determine how high an interest rate you'll pay on your car loan.

Start by pulling a copy of your credit history and score at AnnualCreditReport.com. (The credit history will be free, but you'll have to pay $7 for a credit score.) Then, start shopping around with lenders.

If you can't get a conventional lender to loan you money to buy a used car, consider a P2P lender. P2P stands for person-to-person lending, and it is a growing category of financing, primarily Internet-based.

With a P2P lender, you provide your credit history and score and ask for the amount you need to borrow. Investors (who by and large are ordinary folks like you and me) will decide how much of a risk you pose and tell you how much money they'll loan you and for what interest rate.

A more personal way to do this is to see if you can get a family member to lend you the cash you need to buy your car. You can write up a formal agreement or go to a site like Virgin Money, which will formalize the loan, create a repayment schedule, and arrange for cash to be automatically withdrawn from your account each month.

It's possible that you won't even qualify for a car loan right now, so be sure to figure out a backup plan. Keep this in mind as you're going through the process, and try to develop a backup plan.

Q: If I were to get a VA loan to buy my girlfriend's home could she sell it to me for less than the appraised value of the home? And if so, would her income be considered part of my total income on the VA loan?

A: According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, which backs VA loans, there is nothing in the rules that prohibits a seller from selling a home for less than the VA-determined value of the property.

As far as using a girlfriend's income to help qualify for the loan, it is possible to do this, according to a VA spokesperson. "When a veteran obtains a loan with a person who is not his or her spouse, the VA is only authorized to guarantee the veteran's portion of the loan. This sometimes creates a problem for the lender."

It doesn't sound as though your girlfriend is selling you her house. It sounds like she is selling you half of the house, but you are hoping to qualify for the purchase with her. If you buy half of the house from her, and then you refinance the entire purchase, will there be enough money to pay off her old loans on the home?

There are other considerations as well. In some states, your "purchase" of your share of the home will cause you to pay transfer taxes and other costs. Your girlfriend, in some circumstances, may be considered to have sold part of the home to you for federal income tax purposes. If she has a gain from the sale of that share and she has not lived in the home for two of the last five years, she might have to pay capital gains taxes on the sale to you.

There may be other issues for you to consider and you need to sit down with a good mortgage person to go through them. You may also want to talk to a real estate attorney or estate planner to review your options in moving forward. Since you are not married, you might want an agreement between the two of you to cover the many issues that may arise if you break up -- division of the equity in the home; who would get to keep the home; and forcing the person who stays in the home to refinance to pay off the old debt.

Q: I have a legal question I was hoping you could answer. Let's say I have a Web site where tenants can browse around and find rentals. It's free for prospective tenants to use. However, to post a rental on the Web site, the landlord must pay $19.99 a month.

Keep in mind I have no real connection to the landlord, and I do not personally take the tenant to the landlord's rental or work with the tenants at all. In a nutshell, the landlords pay me to post their rental(s) on my Web site for tenants to browse and get an idea as to where they want to rent.

My question is: Is it legal to receive a commission from the landlord (i.e. the $19.99 per month) for having his or her vacant rental listed on my site even if I don't have a real estate license?

In other words, do you need a real estate salesperson's license to receive compensation in this scenario?

A: I'm not an attorney, but it seems to me that you're an information publisher, not a participant in the real estate transaction. The investor is buying an ad on your Web site. You get paid whether the unit is rented or not.

It appears from your description as though your business isn't all that different from craigslist or a newspaper's online classified advertising section, where real estate agents are charged a flat fee to put their real estate listings on that Web site.

Please talk to an intellectual property attorney for further clarification, and good luck with your venture.

To get even more valuable advice from Ilyce, visit her Personal Finance and Real Estate Center.