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How to Get Rid of a House - Fast
CptHamilton
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So here's the skinny: my wife bought a house when I started grad school. After grad school we moved out of state for my new job. Some folks contracted a lease-to-purchase on our old house, supposedly intending to buy within 3 months.
Cut to two years later. They haven't bought the house and, based on their various credit-related shenanigans they never will. Our taxes are jumping way up due to the property being a non-primary, out-of-state-owned house. I just took a massive pay-cut at work, so there is zero chance that we can afford the mortgage on both our current home (purchased believing the old one was sorted) and the old one. We put the house back on the market 6 months ago (while the leasers were still resident) but have had not a single person contact our real-estate agent to look at the house since. We need to get rid of the house post-haste but can't afford to take a massive loss on it.
Are there any ways to quickly unload the place? We've been looking into the various foreclosure/bankruptcy options, but I don't know jack about real estate and so don't know what I may be missing. It's a perfectly good, 4-5 year old house in a nice neighborhood. The leasers didn't rip out the wiring or bust up the cabinets or anything, so it should logically be worth its appraised price. I know I've seen ads for agencies that buy your house off of you, but I don't know if those things are all scams or if they apply to newish homes selling at or near their appraised value. Is there any way to get rid of the house inside of like 1-3 months that won't completely hose my wife's credit?
Cut to two years later. They haven't bought the house and, based on their various credit-related shenanigans they never will. Our taxes are jumping way up due to the property being a non-primary, out-of-state-owned house. I just took a massive pay-cut at work, so there is zero chance that we can afford the mortgage on both our current home (purchased believing the old one was sorted) and the old one. We put the house back on the market 6 months ago (while the leasers were still resident) but have had not a single person contact our real-estate agent to look at the house since. We need to get rid of the house post-haste but can't afford to take a massive loss on it.
Are there any ways to quickly unload the place? We've been looking into the various foreclosure/bankruptcy options, but I don't know jack about real estate and so don't know what I may be missing. It's a perfectly good, 4-5 year old house in a nice neighborhood. The leasers didn't rip out the wiring or bust up the cabinets or anything, so it should logically be worth its appraised price. I know I've seen ads for agencies that buy your house off of you, but I don't know if those things are all scams or if they apply to newish homes selling at or near their appraised value. Is there any way to get rid of the house inside of like 1-3 months that won't completely hose my wife's credit?
PSN,Steam,Live | CptHamiltonian
CptHamilton on
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Also check the sales in the area, as it might be dead in terms of purchasers. What area? What price range? How much are you prepared to drop the price to get rid of it?
If you still have renters in the place, it may be impossible to get rid of it in 90 days depending on local housing laws.
Thought about that, but it would be a 4-hour commute to work and then we'd have to sell the house here.
The problem is not a crappy realtor or listing the house too high or not having enough upgrades. We upgraded the house before we listed it the first time, got a reasonably successful realtor, and lowered the price to below value when we re-listed it so that it was competitive with other homes in the area. The problem is that nobody is buying. It's a nice, new neighborhood but the collapse of the market stopped all the businesses that were planning to build in the area so now it's further out than people are willing to go when they can live closer to downtown at the same price.
I was hoping there might be some sort of real-estate trickery I wasn't aware of, but I guess it's either get lucky on the shitty market or foreclose. Thanks anyway, all.
If you want to sell the house and people aren't willing to buy it at the price you have it listed for, it is listed too high. The neighborhood is not as valuable as it was expected to be.
1. matches & can of gas - Disclosure: Do not do this.
2. David Copperfield - YES
Expense, basically. We have legal grounds to sue them for the agreed sales price of the house, but doing so requires engaging a lawyer, filing the suit, appearing in court a 4 hour drive away, taking time off of work to do all of this, etc. They can't get a loan to buy the house, much less afford to pay a settlement for the price of the house + legal fees, so if we win they would be forced to file bankruptcy and we would still get nothing.
As for the price of the house: it's listed at just enough to cover the amount left on the mortgage plus taxes. On top of that we're offering to pay toward the buyer's closing costs. The price is less than we paid for it and less than it's appraised at. It's about equal to the listed price of other homes in the area that are smaller than it is. The problem is that nobody there is buying anything. When we put it back on the market there were a half dozen other homes for sale in the area that had been on the market for months. I'm sure if we offered to sell at half-off or something it'd get sold, but then we'd be in the hole for the difference. If we could afford to cough up tens of thousands to settle the mortgage after selling it at below what we owe on it then keeping it on the market to find a buyer at a reasonable price wouldn't be an issue.
If it's not selling, it is by definition listed too high. That's exactly what it is if no one's willing to pay what you have it listed for. You can blame it on the market, but the market is what it is when you're trying to sell. The value of your house isn't some immutable number set in stone, it changes constantly depending on the market.
Can you legally sell the house while still under contract with the people living in it currently?
I also can't afford to sell my house currently, and i am renting it out until i can. I am lucky and am living in my parent's old place so i don't really have any other expenses to speak of. sucks man, but unless you want to walk away from the mortgage you are stuck. Since you already have a second home, it doesn't sound like a foreclosure would end you, talk to the bank and see if you can do one of those "house surrender" things. Where you give them the keys instead of them having to go through the whole foreclosure process. I don't really know how those work though.
Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure is what it's called. Or look into a short sale.
oh and you made a good call not suing the people. Unless you are sure they can afford to pay the settlement, it's not worth the expense. I'm out like 8k extra in lawyer fees because the guy i'm suing is deciding to go bankrupt.
Yeah, we've looked into the various forms of foreclosure/short sale/surrender/etc. Renting is an option, but the total mortgage + taxes is more than I expect people are going to be willing to pay (non-residence, out of state ownership taxes are stupidly enormous) and we're a bit hesitant to get into another rental situation after the BS associated with the lease. I was really just hoping someone would tell me that one of those "we'll buy your house for cash!" things was a reasonable proposition or that there's some little-known government agency that will buy your house on the spot for...science or something. I didn't really expect it to happen, but no harm trying.
Also, if you have a job that requires clean credit (think DoD), I'd really try to avoid a foreclosure/bankruptcy.
This is just the truth of the real estate market for anyone who bought in the last 10 years. There was a real estate bubble, and what you paid for your house was more than it was really worth. You are in an underwater mortgage. I personally would want to find a way out of that situation with my credit intact. That might involve tightening the belt and finding a way to sell the property for less than I owe and somehow shouldering that debt.
There are, however, many people who would strongly endorse walking away from the mortgage. That's a very complicated, legal process, and if you're going to do it make sure you've gotten some sort of counsel to help you dodge any additional complications.
You WILL need to use a law office that works on this stuff to make this work. Their fees for this service are much lower than a traditional transaction.
Also, most realtors don't do this. So you may need to ask around for one that has done it before.
Also, realtor fees are traditionally held until the refi as I understand.
Heck, you might find that renting out the house leads to positive cash flow from the property.
Rigorous Scholarship
He said on the last page that the rent they can pull from it is less than the monthly costs of the house.
It may be that renting the house out at a slight loss might be a better option than getting raped in today's market.
Rigorous Scholarship
That, of course, relies on faith that the market you have your house in WILL recover anytime soon. Some real estate markets are going to stay down for a long, long time. From his description, expected commercial development never occurred near this neighborhood. That neighborhood may never recover to the value originally paid for it, if the original values were based on speculation that the market would grow.
you're going to lose money out of this. the sooner you understand that, the sooner you can get it done and move on.