It didn't work out that way. Within months after moving in last year, Pope received two legal notices. One informed her the house was in tax foreclosure over a $4,900 debt that predated her even setting foot in the home. A few months later, she was served with eviction papers due to a rent squabble that is still playing out in the courts.

It's a familiar story with land contracts, a form of seller financing with a deep, unsavory history in cities nationwide. They're flourishing again as an alternative to mortgages in Rust Belt cities since lending regulations tightened after the housing collapse.

"This is becoming a big problem all over besides just Detroit — like Flint, Battle Creek and other urban areas," said Lorray Brown, co-director of the Michigan Law Poverty Program, which is helping draft legislation to regulate land contracts.

The business model for many land contracts: Buy cheap homes at tax auctions. Do no repairs. Sell for as much as 10 times the purchase price to desperate or naive buyers at high interest rates. Make the owner assume all back debt and upkeep. Evict the buyer if payments are late.

Predatory land contracts are blamed for costing generations of African-Americans their homes — and family wealth — in Detroit and Chicago from the 1940s to early 1970s. And activists fear history is repeating, so they're drafting reforms in Lansing and hoping to organize buyers.

"These have been around for such a long time. We were foolish to think the practice had ended," said Mike Gallagher, a retiree who was part of a well-known Chicago activist group that fought against contract buying in the 1960s.

He's leading a group of activists who plan to travel to southeast Michigan this week to knock on doors of contract buyers.

Last year, land contracts outnumbered mortgages in Detroit, 834 to 710, according to Wayne County records. The land contract numbers are likely far higher than that recorded number because there's no law that requires them to be filed with county officials.

Oakland County had about 800 land contracts last year (compared to 18,000 mortgages). Macomb County officials didn't respond to requests for information, but in 2015 recorded about 750 (compared to 11,000 mortgages that year).

In most cases, land contracts are used legitimately when conventional mortgages are unavailable or private financing is more convenient.

But loose regulations make them an easy tool to exploit inexperienced homebuyers, experts said.

The general rule: Buyer beware. Sellers keep the deeds to homes until they're paid in full. And in Michigan, there's no law requiring land contract sellers to disclose debts and liens or have homes appraised before sales.

"Nobody wants to get a land contract," said Anita Groggins, a Farmington real estate agent who has sold homes on land contracts in Detroit but says she steers them to mortgages.

"The only people who get land contracts are those who can't qualify for mortgages."

That's a lot of people in Detroit, where the average credit score is 585, nearly 100 points lower than the national average. And such contracts are especially appealing because banks don't traditionally loan money to homes worth less than $50,000, which is the case for many homes in Detroit.