Thread: Michigan -> New Jersey Job Offer, short sale questions?

I know you said you don't like the thought of renting out your house, but have you thought about selling your house on a lease option? (Selling on a lease option means that you would rent your house out to tenants with the intention that they will purchase it from you within a set time period, usually 2-3 years.)

This might be helpful to you in a couple ways -

1 - You don't have to let the house go vacant.

2 - Lease option tenants tend not to be as destructive to property as "typical" tenants might be. They don't want to mess up the house too badly because they intend to buy it.

3 - Tenant-buyers cause less worry about dealing with vacancy than regular rent-only tenants would. Tenant-buyers will think twice about backing out of their option to purchase because the deposit they pay to you is non-refundable if they break their contract. And, as a side note about deposits - the amount of deposit you collect on a lease option is completely at your discretion. A lease option deposit isn't limited like a security deposit in a standard lease situation can be. (I don't know about MI, but my state (RI) only allows a landlord to collect the equivalent of one month's rent as a typical security deposit.) The beauty the lease option deposit is that you can set it at whatever you want (typically some percentage of the purchase price), because it's actually a down payment towards the purchase. This makes it harder for your tenant-buyer to walk away from his contract with you, because now he's got a bigger chunk of change on the line than just one month's rent.

4 - Lease option tenants are getting easier to find in our current economic conditions. Banks are no longer lenient with the qualifications of the people to whom they lend money, so while there are plenty of people out there who can afford to pay for a house, many can't get a mortgage because they have flawed credit. Lease optioning to someone in this situation benefits both of you...
- Your tenant has the time he needs to fix his credit and get a mortgage, but yet he's already living in the house he's going to buy.
- You benefit because you'll most likely be able to command a higher asking price due to the fact that you're financing your tenant until he qualifies for his own mortgage.

5 - Lease optioning allows you to avoid some of the typical headaches of being a landlord. (Like getting that call at 2am that the toilet is leaking...) You can draft it right into your lease option contract that the tenant is responsible for all maintenance items up to $1000 (or whatever amount you choose). Tenant-buyers are typically OK with this because if they were able to get a mortgage today and bought the house outright, they would have to pay for all those maintenance things anyway.

I wish I had an quick-and-easy, cut-and-dry solution for you in your situation, but hopefully this will at least help a little.

Whatever you end up doing, best of luck to you. (And if you end up taking that new job - congratulations!)