You are in a situation where you are already three months behind on your mortgage. Fortunately, no foreclosure proceedings have taken place and she still has options. Your wife begins to wonder why you are always worried. She has not received the memorandum. Her dream home that you and her family bought several years ago is turning out to be more than you can handle, especially with all the unexpected bills popping up left and right. If you don’t do something soon, you and your family will find yourself in a very bad situation.
Looking at your situation, you can see that your property is in good condition minus normal wear and tear. You can’t sell without coming to closing with at least $35,000.00 that you don’t have right now. The reason for this is a house in better condition that sold last month for $150,000.00. You owe $185,000.00 and no one is willing to pay that much for your property. You don’t like the idea of doing a short sale because you’ve heard of the many horror stories people go through during and after the process. Your credit isn’t affected as much as it would be after a foreclosure, but you still take a hit. Also, there is still about a 35% chance that the bank will still come after you for the difference and that will not be fun at all. To top it off, short sale success rates are around fifty percent among the industry.
Listing with a real estate agent and waiting for a buyer is pointless as you can’t get to close on the difference and making a short sale is definitely out of the question. Here’s something you may not have thought of: Mortgage Assumption. Some people call it different things, like Subject to Existing Mortgage or Mortgage Management.
Mortgage assumption involves transferring the deed to your property to another buyer in exchange for them to bring the current mortgage and keep the payments. In the real estate market from 2013 to 2018, it is very difficult to get approved for a mortgage among American locals. This way of doing business opens the doors to thousands of buyers who, for various reasons, are not eligible for a mortgage.
Your best bet in this situation is to work with an experienced professional real estate buyer who can take on the mortgage himself or find multiple interested parties to do so. Not many professionals know how to legally structure this correctly and finding an agent who knows how to do it is like finding a needle in a haystack. Find a well-connected real estate investor who can help and enable you to move on with his life and preserve and maintain his good credit standing.