I’m looking for some ideas from some of the “creative” real estate people around here. Basically, I bought a condo outside DC as a primary residence in April 2006. Bad timing. I decided to move south in December 2007 and couldn’t sell for what I thought was a reasonable price, so I rented out the property while the market “recovered.” Of course, that didn’t happen. I’ve since purchased a new home in South Carolina that I plan on staying in, and want to get out of the condo but I’m upside-down. What are my options? Here are the numbers:
Purchase price: $205k
Loan balance: $167k @ 6.625%
Current value: $130-150k
Monthly PITI+condo fee: $1525
Current rent: $1200/mo (rented 1st 18 months for $1350)
So it costs me $325/month to own right now, but I don’t have cash to bring to the table to sell at, say, $140k. I guess I could try to loan the difference, but the monthly payment would be higher than $325, so I feel like I’m “stuck” holding and renting until something changes.
You could sell it at a loss, and pay the difference at closing. If you’re losing $3.5-4k a year — its really probably going to be 5k or more as you didn’t factor in maintenance & vacancies, among other real estate expenses.
You could turn the property over to the lender, and ruin your credit. I would not recommend this option — but it’s always there.
I’m guessing just one mortgage… I would go the short sale route. Call the bank, explain your situation, ask them to take the fair market value and they should cooperate.
If they don’t, fall behind on payments, then do the short sale.
Any chance you could lease/option it to a buyer @ $1525/month? A buyer who doesn’t have a downpayment, but would like to own his own place?
There is info. on this site on how to do that. I haven’t done one of these in years, but others have expertise. Anyone, could this be a plan? There’s lots of turnover of residents in Wash. DC.
I’ve thought about the short sale…if the bank agrees to this and I’m not behind on payments, will it still affect my credit? It’s BoA, and my credit is high 700’s. I always hear that banks won’t even entertain a short sale unless you’re behind on payments. Is this changing?
I’m going to assume your mortgage payment is $1,069.32 and your taxes, insurance and condo fees run about $455.68, deduced from the information you’ve provided.
Someone else could buy your property today and have a monthly mortgage payment of about $839 with an approximate total monthly cost of $1,294.68. With its rental value at $1,200 on the good side most of the drop in your property value has probably already occurred, assuming you sold to a retail buyer seeking for an owner occupied property. Though to be fair as an investor I wouldn’t be paying more than $100k for your property, probably even less than that, and that may well be the main buyers you’d find right now or in the near future. And this assumes that rents don’t continue to fall as others in your situation seek to do what you did and try to rent and wait out the crash. This also assumes that the other costs on the property don’t go up such as taxes, condo fees, etc. This also means that its unlikely that you’d be able to lease option this, unless your willing to continue to eat the costs. Who’d want to buy your property at a 25% markup, and that is at today’s prices.
Its likely that both rents and prices will continue to fall or at least stay stagnant for several more years so I’d try and get rid of this liability as soon as possible. Your loss is not just $325/month (plus lost opportunity costs on that money). If it has been so far you have been lucky. There are many other costs to holding a rental property, many random in both the times that they appear and their costs. The longer you hold onto it the deeper in the hole you will be getting into.
Assuming you sold today at $140k you would have to somehow come to the table with 27k, plus about $8,400 in realtor costs, and some percentage in closing costs. So lets estimate about 40k. This really only leaves you a few options.
Talk to your bank about a loan modification, stress that you are likely to be forced to default at some point if something isn’t done to bring your costs in line with your payments now. If they can extend your term to 40 years and lower your interest rate to 4% you could break even every month assuming nothing goes wrong in the condo that causes large unexpected costs in the next few years. Even if this is just done temporarily until the local rental price rises enough to make up that extra $325, it would help. On the downside you’d still be paying more money on a property than its worth. At best you’d only be able to break even over time.
If you feel that it is your best option morally and for your credit rating you could ask your bank if they would be willing to convert that 40k into a regular loan, or as a 2nd to your current home, to you with the same terms as the original mortgage. At this rate your monthly loss will be $256 instead of $325 and with luck on an unsecured loan.
You could default on your mortgage, assuming its on a non-recourse loan, and take the 7 year hit to your credit now. This counts both defaulting by not paying and being foreclosed upon and doing a short sale.
Depending on your local market you might be able to get in extra rent by renting per room instead of the entire place. I’ve noticed significant differences between what you can get for rent for a multi-room apartment and if you rented the same apartment per room; depending on the area. Note, this may complicated the process of getting rid of a bad “roommate” depending on your local laws. You may want to consult an attorney for advise and the agreements you would need. Assuming that you are in a decent area with good transportation, dc suburbs can be pretty expensive, I would assume you should at the very minimum be able to get $500/room and ~$700/room is probably not unreasonable with the roommates splitting the utility costs. If you have a three bedroom unit this could well put you back in the black. Note, unless the potential income difference is huge I would stick with the current tenant if they are good tenants.