IGX

So in short, I have a guy who is willing to owner finance his house in a sale to me.

He still has a mortgage but I believe he can pay it off if he wanted.

I'm clueless here. I can't see the angle for his benefit. Conflicting interwebs info says I cannot assume the mortgage and others say I can using a wrap mortgage. For the price he is saying he will sell to me I would benefit from a large amount of equity.

Somebody here has to have some experience/knowledge of this.

So then this is not a land contract, but seller financed mortgage?

dingleberry wrote:So in short, I have a guy who is willing to owner finance his house in a sale to me.

He still has a mortgage but I believe he can pay it off if he wanted.

I'm clueless here. I can't see the angle for his benefit. Conflicting interwebs info says I cannot assume the mortgage and others say I can using a wrap mortgage. For the price he is saying he will sell to me I would benefit from a large amount of equity.

Somebody here has to have some experience/knowledge of this.

whether you can assume the mortgage depends entirely on what the seller's original loan agreement says.

Somebody here has to have some experience/knowledge of this.

On something this big, I would avoid interwebs advices and talk to a real estate attorney. I have heard of deals like this, but since his bank owns the house, and you could conceivably be paying him while he fails to pay the bank, the bank takes "your" house.

Yeah, this could go south rapidly. It sounds like it's too good a deal to be viable.

The only people who ever want to assume someone else's mortgage are scrubs with shitty credit scores who just attended a 2-hour FREE real estate seminar at an airport Holiday Inn.

Talk to an actual real estate attorney.

Eh, crazy deals happen. Real estate is a pretty inefficient market, and it's possible to get stellar deals because somebody is making a dumb choice now or is dealing with the ramifications of a previously dumb choice.

Short sales, divorce, people just wanting out, there are reasons this *might* be a good deal. But it could also be a guy who read a Kiyosaki book and thinks he's a capitalist now.

For the most part I dislike talking to lawyers but this seems like a good time to talk to one. You might start out with the loan officer at your local bank (they'll probably be free, unlike an attorney) - who may be able to give you some advice from their side of things.

I'm not sure I would trust a local bank's loan officer much more than random people on the Internet.

Talk to a lawyer or walk away.

Find a real estate attorney so you won't have a horror story to come tell us one day

Thanks folks, there is no hurry to get this done so I'm planning on doing my research. This was the first step as all the lie-man knowledge is here.

Whatever you do, don't think of a house purchase as an investment. Think of it as paying for a place to live.