All Forum Posts by: Benjamin Cowles

When someone goes to the hospital or requires medical care and they don't have the money or means to pay, the state assumes financial responsibility. The state has requirements for people to qualify for benefits. Their assets cannot exceed $999.00 with the exception of primary home, 1 car, wedding ring or exempt personal property. A note is personal property. Depends on how state law is written, if the note is valued based on market value of assets and that note is not marketable, it is taken out of the evaluation of their assets. If it is marketable and worth more than the amount allowed, the note must be sold. The proceeds of the note sale or any assets sold will need to be spent on care, or that dollar amount must be spent before they qualify. Say the note is worth $10,000, they are only allowed $999, that means $9,001 must be spent on care before benefits can be awarded for their care. That amount usually comes from the sale of the note. 

There are also laws concerning estate planning for the purpose of qualifying for benefits, a felony, and there is a "look back" period (7 years) where assets disposed of can become part of that asset evaluation.

I highly suggest investors who are dealing with elderly people seek legal advice in 3 areas, medical benefit assessments, elder law and finance if doing a seller financed note. 

Not sure about the 8 year old, but that's at least the eighth grade level ;)  

...The loan should be marketable for the seller....in most cases, but not all. If an elderly person may end up in a nursing home they could have asset issues to qualify for benefits. The note can be marketable and sold to pay for costs or, depending on state law, if the asset is not marketable it won't count in qualifications. So, again, how's your legal knowledge?...

Jan,

She started making payments again... Eventually.. So she's still in it.

@Benjamin Cowles

I would prefer to rent or sell. I don't know all the aspects of the Dodd Frank act or laws regarding seller financing. 

If I were to do seller financing, I would only be profiting the interest rate. If I were to keep the property and rent out, my profit would be much greater with the rental income versus the interest rate. Obviously, this all depends on rental income, house prices and interest rates. Here in Rochester, home prices are cheap, rents are decent, so the interest rate versus the profit from rental income is greater. 

I've done it before with Letters Of Intents. I didn't go off of list price though, I went off of a CMA. I found a new, hungry realtor and had her make about 50 offers a week. She needed something to do anyway. I ended up getting one deal out of it.

@Matt Motil Thank you for the mention! 

...

I agree there is no point with rent to own, as I prefer to keep all the profit if the mortgage is in my name. We also have tenants that have interest in purchasing one of our rentals. But we are not willing to do rent to own, either. 

I am always glad to answer any questions. 

I just got registered. It was a pretty thorough process. They ran a back ground check on me, asked for lots of documents proving who I was and how I was tied to my business. Then they do a site inspection of your office. My understanding was you need a commercial office site. They won't approve people who work out of their homes. I've just started using the site, so I don't have any feed back yet on how helpful it is for me to find missing owners and heirs. My sales rep was very easy to communicate with. I'd call your rep and ask what you need to do different to get an approval.