All Forum Posts by: Mitch Davidson

@Samuel Fletcher Hardy. Sounds like you're referring to the seller's agent. If so, institutional investors, as well as agents like Roofstock who sell for them, tend to only pay 1% or so commission. That combined with the relatively low sales price is a recipe for understandably lacking motivation on behalf of the agent. @Nathan Gesner above is spot on. Your contract has no bearing on the tenant's rights. Unless the seller and/or PM gets involved you're stuck.

Hi @Derek Simkins. Man, that's a lot of hoop jumping. And quite a bit of risk for both sides. Are you sure there are no other ways to make more traditional financing work? For example, perhaps you add a coborrower or perhaps you can qualify for a bank statement loan? Happy to discuss further if you like. 

@Kyler J Sloan. Gotcha. I'd start with GRCC. John Rose or Beth Cramer.

@Steven P Daugherty. Good question regarding buying a primary when you just bought one in July. If you were staying here in Asheville, no, you wouldn't be able to get a new primary residence loan so soon, as a year hasn't passed. In your case you'll be fine though, as you're relocating for work purposes.

@Kyler J Sloan No need for an attorney to help with the partial release. Just reach out to the servicing group for your mortgage and they can help you. If that's the property that has a Movement mortgage on it, I can message you the email address for the servicing group. 

We have several great options for closings here in Asheville. Some of them aren't too comfortable helping with drafting contracts for FSBO transactions though. If you want a firm that'll do closings and help with contracts I would recommend GRCC (Goosmann, Rose, Colvard & Cramer).

For a closing? For guidance? Or for litigation? They tend to do one or the other.

Hi @Manuel Escalante. I agree that Airbnb is not a good resource. MTR is for tenants not guests, and Airbnb is built for guest stays. Effective MTR requires a bulletproof lease, tenant screening, etc., none of which Airbnb is helpful with. My current MTR has been tenanted with very little gap time for 6 years now. We're on tenant number 14 at this point. And I only use Zillow for advertising, which includes Trulia and Hotpads. For sake of safety in event of a legal dispute I insist that everyone I consider complete the same application. And Zillow's application is pretty good. I won't even talk to the person on the phone until they complete an application. That weeds out most of the unqualified candidates. I digress. If I also list on Furnished Finder in the future, which I may, I'll need to use a third part application app, like RentPrep, and then post a link to the app on Furnished Finder and Zillow. That'll likely be more work and cost, so I'll try to avoid it. Hope this helps.

@Ron S.. Thanks for sharing. Man, that's really helpful stuff.

Good points, @Ron S. There are also some oddities about a subto arrangement that could be challenging for an IRS audit. For example, I get a 1099INT but don't write off the interest, but you the person I sold to write it off. Regarding the LLC idea, I was just saying that a seller could test the waters with their servicer ahead of time. Meaning, change the title far in advance of selling. If after a while the servicer hasn't accelerated it'll give a little more assurance that they won't do so. In my situation, my servicer has never applied the DOS clause in their history. That's common with large lenders that self-service. But hey, that could change. And I certainly don't have anything I can offer in writing to assure a buyer of that. So I agree with you that it's a pretty risky scenario, especially for the seller.

@Ron S. I totally understand your concerns, but most local attorneys are largely unfamiliar with the strategy, as are most brokers. Thus some of the pushback seems kneejerk due to the concept being new and novel. That said, I'm sure most attorneys don't want someone to be able to point the finger at them if a lender applies the DOS clause, but not all of them worry about that. And the DOS clause is very rarely applied. In some cases the mortgagor can find out that their servicer never applies the DOS clause over title changes. Also, as an idea, if one of the parties is worried about the DOS clause the seller can change title to an LLC owned by them before the sale, and then give it a couple of months and see if the servicer takes issue with it. In the rare event that they do take issue perhaps the mortgagor can avert a problem by QCD'ing title back to their name (or maybe even just by showing that they are the sole owner of the entity). Otherwise, if a couple of months pass with no pushback I think the parties, including the attorney, might feel more assurance that there won't be issues post sale. Then the seller can sell the LLC to the buyer as part of the transaction, so as to prevent another title change.