How this whole thing got started.
I started house hunting in Upstate New York, in early 2025 after qualifying for a $250,000 FHA (First Time Homebuyer) Loan from one of our local banks.
For about $250,000 you can get an okay house right in the middle of town with little to no property (not what I wanted) or maybe qualify for a small 1-2 bedroom just on the outskirts of town. Not what I was looking for, I like space.
My dad suggested we take a look at Poor Man’s Castle.
Poor Man’s Castle was a multi-resident foreclosure as an established 3 apartment property. The owner of the property passed in 2020. The asking price was about $80,000 by the foreclosing bank. Poor Man’s Castle was listed as a 3,600 sq ft property on a 1.65 acre lot of land. It needed a lot of work and with it being a foreclosure there is no way of knowing what kind of work it would entail.
My amazing realtor, Melinda C. got us access to the property and showed us around. I got to the attic, realized the living space was perfect, and saw the acreage and I wanted it. Dad really liked it too and saw the potential.
I offered $50,000 and it was accepted. Definitely a gambling endeavor. But if I was going to put $250,000 into my forever home, I wanted to do it this way. I went through a private lender/investor and avoided a lot of the bank construction loan requirement/timeline crap and interest rates.
I closed on Poor Man’s Castle July 25th, 2025.
Then began the Poor Man’s Castle Project and its youtube and social media production. I knew with the help of my dad this could be a good opportunity for video production that could eventually lead to some expanded community opportunities such as advertising for local small and larger businesses while also providing some income depending on the popularity of the video channels.
That is the story of how Poor Man’s Castle came to be and we couldn’t be more grateful, blessed, and inspired. We thank you for your support and hope we can provide you with some educational and some humorous entertainment for the duration of the project.
Thank you.
We now have promo items available for purchase in our online Shopify store! There will be more items added as time goes on.
We have been shown a great amount of support by our local community as well as some now global members.
We have people interested in donating but after discussing this new opportunity with the leader of this project, my dad, Jim, we thought that maybe in lieu of directly charitable donations, we could offer those who wanted to donate to our project some cool, usable, promotion items. Such as T-Shirts, Sweatshirts, Tumblers, Ect.
With this new opportunity, we thought that while we are doing these promotional items we have decided to utilize some of the local businesses to help with the production of our promotional items like logo engraved tumblers, which will be offered soon.
The advertising we will be doing for these local businesses will be mentioned/featured in our Jenna’s Junction – Poor Man’s Castle Videos in the attempts to hopefully bring buyers directly to these local businesses for their own personal designs.
Thank you for your support and with your support we are hoping to make a better community by working together.
Visit the store at jennas-junction.myshopify.com