How to Sell your House Fast in London
Can you sell your house fast today? It depends on your definition of fast. Is it as fast as ordering an Uber or renting a vacation rental on AirBnB? Heck no. Can you sell your house as quickly as you can get a mortgage to buy a new one on a site like Lending Tree? Nope. Unless you want to put your home out there on a fire sale for pennies on the dollar, you can’t sell it that fast by any measure. Today, you need to jump through hoops and hurdles. Endless streams of red tape. Agents. Commissions. And never-ending fees. These are the norm. Not the exception.
Unlike transportation, commerce and entertainment, real estate has been slow to change. The legalities and complexities are endless. Sure, there are quicker ways to sell your home. They involve going to companies that we call iBuyers. Meaning, they buy the asset themselves. Companies like OpenDoor, OfferPad, and even, Zillow, have all entered the fray. And for good reason. But does that enable you to get top dollar when selling it direct? Certainly not.
In this series on selling houses faster we have focused on using creative tactics and eliminating some or all of the middlemen involved in the process of selling single family houses in the worst real estate market since the Great Depression.
Today, we eliminate the loan creation process by using the financing that is already in place for the home that we want to sell. Realize as we go through an example that this technique could well be used in conjunction with other strategies.
Let's say your home is in a nice neighborhood and was worth $100,000 at the top of the market and today bank owned homes are selling for and setting the comps at $40,000. Probably should be about $60,000 if it were not for the bank owned homes going for loss leader prices. You have a $60,000 mortgage at 6 per cent for thirty years and a monthly payment of $359.73, which makes a monthly payment of about $550 with taxes and insurance.
If you go to a real estate agent, she may say you need to stop making payments, ruin your credit, and apply for a short sale because you owe more than the house is worth in the current market.
Or, you can advertise your house as pretty three bed two bath in nice neighborhood with no qualifying mortgage and payments of $595 a month. Does that sound like something that will get the Craig's list reader calling you?
They should call because they have the same problem you have: the banking system. If the buyers could get loans to buy houses there would not be the housing crises, they could get a loan because the comps would not be artificially low and they could get money from the bank to pay off the money you borrowed from the bank. They can't! And, neither can you! SO!!!
You need three things at this point. A simple application which you can get at an office supply store. A service to run a credit check, a hundred of them on the Internet. A real estate contract, also from the office supply store. The attorney you will use to close the transaction should be helpful as well.
The contract is called a "subject to" contract. This means the sale is subject to the mortgage. Your buyer is not "assuming" your mortgage. The mortgage will stay in your name and on your credit. The deed will be in the name of the buyer. For a house in this price range, you should have no trouble getting a "buyer" who will pay you $4,995 for the privilege of owning your home and making monthly payments of $595 to you.
You, in turn will be making the $550 payments to the bank.
You have the choice of letting the buyer make the payments directly, but I would rather stay in the loop. Have them pay you and you pay the mortgage. That way you will know immediately if something goes wrong and they stop paying. (One of the risks.)
Another risk is what is called the due on sale clause of your mortgage. Thirty years ago mortgages were assumable. That means the buyer could take over the mortgage and he, not you, were responsible for making the payments. That feature is no longer available in modern bank mortgages. One clause in the mortgage says if you sell the house the loan is due in full.
I have been buying houses subject to the mortgage for twenty years and I have never had a loan called because of the due on sale clause. The banks just want to be paid. I have never met anyone who has had it called. But, the banks could call the loan and they have the legal right to do so.
Realistically, the risk is that the buyer will stop paying, not that the loan will be called due in full. The most likely inconvenience is that the bank will sell the loan. So, we recommend getting three complete sets of paper work telling the bank that the buyer is authorized to send them money and to receive information from them.
While this approach offers some tremendous advantages, quick sale, at good price, it is also detail heavy and if you are new to this you need the assistance of a good real estate attorney or real estate investor who has done it a few dozen times. And once you sell the house to the buyer you will not be able to get them out quickly if they fail to pay.
While, I have used this exact system countless times with no troubles and you can too, the approach we will discuss tomorrow gives you all of these advantages and protection against many of the risks, especially the difficulty of getting the buyer out if they do not pay. Subject to is a good system for you to buy houses with little or no risk. If you are a seller, look into the Famous Rent to Own Program™ covered in the next installment.
Okay, the last way to sell your home quickly might be to transfer your mortgage to someone else. But it also means that your mortgage must be assumable by someone else. You’ll need to read your mortgage docs to figure this out. But if it is assumable, then you’re in luck. This could even mean that you could stay in your home and rent it. Is this a common scenario? No. Yet it is possible. You just need to do a bit of leg work to make it happen.
Keep in mind that whoever the new “borrower” is, they need to qualify for that mortgage. And that might take some hoops to jump through. And if you’re truly buried under debt and can’t make your payments, it might not be the fastest way to get out of your home. But it is an option. How long does it take? Again, it all depends. Contact your bank and see if this is even a thing. If it is, you’ll also need to find the person who’s willing to assume the mortgage in the first place. Homesoldquickly.com can assist you in selling your House fast.
