Home owners submit a letter of interest to HouseStories. This letter provides us with a clear indication of the home owners intention to stay in their home. We do not want to provide help to those who just wish to leave their homes. We want to help people who value their house, and want to stay. Once we review this letter, we will make a decision of whether we wish to sponsor the home owner through our program. If we do choose to sponsor the home owner, we put the wheels in motion to generate the design and printing of a visual book, based on an architectural model of their home. We then place an article outlining their story and the book on the HouseStories site, and offer it for sale. The home owners identity remains anonymous to the public. The public then reads the story, and decides which story to support through the purchase of a book. The majority of book purchases, (87%), goes into a fund for the homeowner, to provide bridge funding and make mortgage payments for them. This is not a loan, but the direct proceeds from the sale of the books. We project the average homeowner will likely receive enough funding for one year of mortgage payments. This is only projection, and it will depend on how many books are sold.

We also offer the sale of individual pages of the book, through small donations. Each person making such a donation can elect to have their name printed on the page of the book. These sales allow smaller donations to help build the fund. The number of pages that are purchased increases the size of the book. The books remain for sale, for one year. We feel that this is a long enough period of time to provide funding to the homeowner.

If you are a home owner, who is interested in participating in this project, please send us an email, with a brief one page description of why you value your home, including your location, (city and state, and country if outside the United States), and how you came to a point of needing additional support. Please include the amount of your monthly mortgage payment. This will help us determine whether or not this level of funding will be sufficient for you. All proposals will be verified before we process final applications. We hope to start funding distressed homeowners by the end of 2008, with an initial number of 100 proposals.