Homeowner · Bainbridge, GA · Member since 2019 · 12 posts · 9 votes
My wife and I are selling our home that we still owe about 72k on. A family came to us and want to buy it for 100k, and want to put 50k down, and pay the rest over 3-5 years. They don't have any credit and say they want to pay this off asap. I am curious what, if any, options we have to help them out. I have been researching online but seem to keep getting conflicting information. I will add for context that most of our communication have been through the daughter, who is in high school, due to the parents not speaking English well. I was also curious is charging them interest a requirement? Can we take the difference between selling price and remaining mortgage, then put the rest of the downpayment towards the mortgage and rent them the home? or any other ideas. They are a local family and we would love to help them get a home if possible.
@Chad Griffin What is your purpose here? To help out the community or to maximize the financial outcome for you and your wife in the sale of your home? I find this post on BP to be confusing as this is not a website for sharing ideas on how to be charitable to others, which sounds like your biggest motivation based on your post.
All that being said, the details you have provided appear to me that you would be taking on potentially significant risk. This would not be something I would consider, especially in a period of a strong housing market. If the market was in the dumps, and you had limited offers from quality buyers, this might be something I would consider if I really had to get out of the property.
@Chad Griffin, I think your best bet would be to talk with a real estate attorney on this one. I get your dilemma. I think that you may look at a lease option type of situation here. With a proper contract, they can give you the down payment to hold the purchase with the dollar amount being negotiable but the more the better for you to secure the deal. Then you lease them the house and can choose how much of that goes towards their principal with you. As for paying off the house, that will be your contractual obligation between them and your lender to make sure when they finally do either pay off the house with you and enact the right to purchase, that you're not left trying to figure out how to pay it all off suddenly. I'm not an attorney though and it seems like your situation is a bit atypical but not something that couldn't be figured out.