How do I structure this deal?

[Ira Ashton]

Hey BP! My parents are looking to move and have offered to let us buy their home in the next couple of years when they downsize. Their home is the home my grandpa built and I remodeled many years ago. We definitely have sentimental attachments to this home and it would be great for our family, but I’m still trying to look at it from an investor perspective. They would give us a deal. The home was appraised for $420k a year ago & I KNOW they wouldn’t ask more than $400k—they may even go down to the loan amount. It also has a very nice 1 bed basement apartment that we could use to help supplement the mortgage, & we could potentially rent out both spaces when we leave. My dad is a lawyer (he does not specialize in real estate though) and it would not be too difficult to structure things however we needed to. He made the loan assumable in case any of his children wanted to take over the loan some day. They currently owe about $365k. Since this is an opportunity to buy a property creatively—which is something we haven’t done before—I was wondering what all of you brilliant investors out there would do in my shoes?? Here are a few more questions. I’d appreciate your thoughts on any of these: •I’ve heard that there may still be certain tax advantages or disadvantages of assuming a loan—to both parties. Is this something that you would recommend we do? Why or why not? What do we need to be aware of? Would it be better to assume the loan and refi at a certain point in time? (I’m pretty sure they got one of the lowest rates out there, FYI.). •We really like the idea of not going through a bank so we can have flexibility in terms, but would there be some benefit to getting a traditional bank loan instead? •What other strategies could we possibly use in this scenario? • I’m sure that we could give them a down payment of at LEAST $20k if needed. They are wanting to build a new home and I don’t know exactly what they would have/need from this deal to do that, or if we should offer some kind of down payment or future balloon payment. We don’t want to screw my parents over. We aren’t sure where to begin here, & we have some time to think about it...but what do you all think? What options could we present to them? Thanks in advance for sharing your wisdom with us, BP community!