How did this happen? Also how did one church go in to this kind of massive debt? I heard that offerings or revenue has gone down probably due to bad economy but million in debt seems a little ridiculous for one church.
Does the church still make mortgage payment?

Potentially an obvious real estate question, but hey, it's Yahoo answers, so I'm free to ask all the silly questions I want here:

Instead of getting a costly mortgage with a lender like Countrywide, why can't I just go out and find someone with captial and say, 'Hey, would you give me a 0,000 loan at 4%, and I'll give you first lien on the house if the payments are default?' The deal is signed at a title company and I have an EFT draft created to deduct cash from my bank for each months payments.

The benefit to me is a smaller monthly mortgage payment.

The benefit to the lender guy is that he draws 4% for nothing, and he can potentially bag the house if I default (which would be very unlikely to happen).

PROs/CONs to this plan? And what am I missing that might be painfully obvious here?
(and no, I have no plans to do this. It's just something I've been kicking around. And besides, I wouldn't even know where to go to find a rich person willing to do this anyhow..:)

Is it against the real estate law for an agent to give his client money for personal needs (to make the mortgage payment), and have the client name the agent as the beneficiary on the deed of trust to the house as collateral for the cash loan?
I'm sorry, I forgot to mention that I already own my home, I refinanced it to make repairs and have an agent who has listed it for sale. The agent helped me get the loan for the re-fi. The hard money loan came afterwards when the mortgage payments became more than i could afford so the agent offered to loan me money for survival until the house sold.