Jason Schmitt lost his $90,000-a-year job on an oil rig in 2009. The bank repossessed his Tulsa home and a rental property, and the former U.S. Army combat engineer filed for bankruptcy. Last month, after moving with his family to his Missouri hometown, he bought the $75,000 three-bedroom home he had been renting with the help of a Veterans Administration mortgage that lets borrowers buy property only two years after a foreclosure. "I'm not embarrassed by saying we had a bankruptcy-it seems that so many people have fallen victim to losing their job," says Schmitt, now a nursing recruiter for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. "We've come back from this, and we are not going to give up on homeownership."
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