Update1 ‘Mortgage Cakes’ Become Full-Time Job
by Tim Manni
Update1: What started out as a last-ditch effort to save her home from foreclosure, has grown into a full-time job for one New Jersey woman. Back in July we wrote about Angela Logan, mother of three and self-taught baker, who baked and sold her own cakes to help pay for her mortgage:
Logan recently trademarked the name of her signature cake and signed a two-year licensing agreement with Bake Me A Wish, an online seller of special-event cakes.
The company is producing Mortgage Apple Cake according to Logan’s recipe at its Long Island plant, and Logan is developing a line of other cakes under her name for Bake Me A Wish, while serving as spokeswoman for Mortgage Apple Cake. Five percent of the apple cake proceeds goes to GreenPath Debt Solutions, a non-profit credit counseling service that helps consumers in the sort of financial predicament in which Logan found herself.
Bake Me A Wish stepped in and assisted Logan about a month ago when her home kitchen quickly became too small to support the thousands of orders that were coming in. According to the Bergen (NJ) Record, BakeMeAWish.com shipped 2,500 cakes last week alone. Logan says it was her “out of the box” approach to solving her financial problem that has helped her generate so much interest.
Under Logan’s Federal loan modification, she had to make three payments of $2, 559.94 to her lender. She’s happy to report that the first two payments were made, and the third is ready to be mailed — a month ahead of schedule.
(Original post, “Cooking Up A Way to Avoid Foreclosure,” published on 7/20/09): Angela Logan, 55, of Teaneck, NJ is attempting to bake her financial problems away. After a series of financial misfortunes, Logan received a foreclosure notice on the home she has been living in with her family for the last 20 years. With the help of a credit counselor, the mother of three had her loan modified under the Federal program. Under her new loan, Logan has to pay three installments of $2,560 — the first of which is due July 26.
Logan began baking earlier this year, asking family and friends to buy her cakes t0 help her avoid foreclosure. The cakes, which sell for $40 a piece, have really begun to catch on. The self-taught baker set out with a goal to sell 100 cakes in order to make her first payment. Before last week she had sold only 42 cakes. After several news stories and T.V. appearances, Logan has received over 225 orders, and the calls and emails keep coming.
What started out as a disaster for one American homeowner has quickly turned into a blessing, and now a possible new career path. While we don’t know the specifics of Logan’s mortgage, we are curious to why a homeowner who couldn’t make their payments in the first place was given a modified loan that included three more, quite onerous, payments.
What other inventive ways are people attempting to avoid foreclosures?
