Hello all, I wanted to discuss some of the potential pros / cons to doing a real estate deal with family.
My fiancé's parents are looking to retire and basically travel America. They want to down size from there nice 4 bed 3 bath house (that's paid off) in the suburbs to a small apartment with little maintenance. We are looking to move out of our house in a mediocre part of town. We think that their house will be appraised at slightly more (0-50K) than what we can sell our house. That being said, they have owned that house for the last 30 years, and there are a lot of beautiful features to the house, but also a lot of old out dated items such as the kitchen and a bath. To make things nice and convenient for my in-laws and retirement, they would be willing to give us a small discount since it saves them the time and hassles of remodeling / real estate agents / house showing / not selling. (But they didn't say how much) It also gives them a definite sale. What they plan on doing is getting an appraisal and negotiating a price with us based on that. We think they will knock a little bit off, but who knows since it's part of there retirement money. They said they will move out and let us slowly move in before we sell our current house, or live there while it's on the market if it doesn't sell right away. There are a lot of convenient factors for us and it would be a definite upgrade for us compared to our current situation.
Are there any pros / cons, do's / don'ts, advantages ?
What's the best way to structure the deal / mortgage?
Is there a good way to structure things for us to save? On taxes?
Should I or them utilize a real estate agent? Lawyer? Title insurance? Etc...
Are we foolish for considering a deal with family? Most all comps we anticipate are not even close in quality of schools, house size, yard, potential, etc. Anyone have any experience with this?
