Serious post by the way and please don’t judge me on thinking about this but we absolutely love our home and our next door neighbor is awesome. She’s a very kind 105 year old woman, but obviously the age thing is very real and I am fortunate enough to be in a position to hypothetically put a down payment on her home IF it ever goes up for sale.
My reason for doing this is that the houses in our neighborhood are relatively close together and I would like to somewhat control who our neighbors are either by buying the home and reselling it myself or renting it out, or even just keeping it and treating it as an extension of our home. But the real motivating factor again is having some kind of control over who becomes our neighbors.
I know it’s a controversial take so I expect hate here but looking for guidance on if this is even a good idea and what’s the smartest way to go about it. No guarantee this would even happen since my neighbors family can totally just have their own family move in which would be fine because they’re all lovely, but in the case it goes up for sale, then I’d be very interested.
Let’s say it goes up for sale and my intention is to resell it or even flip it to resell, would I be trying to put 20% down or the lowest amount down as possible just to be able to control the asset? Which I think is like 5%?
Any thoughts here appreciated. Thank you.
Should I try to buy my 105 year old next door neighbors home when she passes?
byu/waxoffisforpussies inpersonalfinance
Posted by waxoffisforpussies
6 Comments
My parents neighbor did that. That’s how we got the house. They’ve been there almost 40 years. It was a great relationship until he passed. He enjoyed us as kids and really liked having my parents there.
Your money, your choice. However, you can’t guarantee whoever you meet will be as good as they seem.
His house is now owned by a couple who don’t live even remotely close. They’ve rented to the family living there for around 2 decades. That family has been pretty chill and their kids have house sat for my parents for many years.
Rent it out and you’ll have a bit more control but ultimately you should make sure it’s a financial decision that you can afford and you’re happy with.
Buy it now if you can. Make her a deal that she can stay as long as she lives, but you would like to buy it.
Approach her about giving you right of first refusal
A friend did this, and they have no regrets.
If you have a good bit of equity in your own house, potentially the best way to pay for it is a cash out refi. That way, you get the better mortgage rate secured by a primary residence, then use the proceeds to buy the second house.
If your budget is in order otherwise, and you’ve got the money and nothing else you’d rather spend it on, sure, buy the house next door.
Realize that doing that does not give you the ability to control who lives there unless you continue to own it, and that as a landlord, there are going to be at least some limits/process to evicting a tenant, varying with your local laws.
If you resell the house, you give up control of who lives there. The buyer isn’t obligated to tell you the truth (or at all) who they plan to allow to live in the home, to own it for some given length of time, etc.
Good idea, who dhe leaves it to will have other ideas, needs, goals.
Tough to plan for a very big unknown.