When you want to sell your home, you are probably looking for someone who can qualify for a bank mortgage to buy your home, right?
Assuming you are successful in finding such a buyer, the costs of the sale will probably wipe out your equity, or profit on the sale.
The National Association of Realtors estimates that the average home sells for approximately 9% less than the asking price.
Take out 2%-3% for the seller paid closing costs, approximately 3% for the on-going costs of mortgage, taxes, insurance, maintenance and repairs for the 90-120 days between listing and closing, and you have lost at least 14% of the value of your home to the costs of selling!
Imagine having to subtract another 6% for the realtor!
If you are the average homeowner, you have less than 25% equity in your home, according to the National Association of Mortgage Bankers. Do the math and you will see that you will walk away from the sale of your home with virtually nothing, unless
For every property for sale, including yours, there exits a market of Phantom Buyers.
These are people who would love to buy a house like yours, but who cannot or will not qualify for a bank mortgage.
They may be self-employed businesspeople, small business owners, or foreign nationals. They do not want to have to show tax returns, financial statements or assets. And yes, there may be others in this catagory with bad credit resulting from a personal or business reversal.
What they all have in common is that, in most cases; they have plenty of cash and the income to support the monthly payments necessary to finance the purchase of your house.
When you offer your home on terms that meet their needs, with seller financing, these Phantom Buyers will gladly pay you 20-30% more than the fair market value of your home.
You will double or triple your profit from the sale!
There is only one way to be able to sell your home with seller financing to someone else without them having to get a new mortgage to replace yours.
You must place the title to your home into a properly structured land trust, then you sell it on a "Rent to Own" basis to one of the Phantom Buyers.
The new buyer pays you a substantial down payment, perhaps even the total amount of equity you have in the house, then makes payments on the balance, if any of your equity, and takes over the payments on your mortgage. The term of the deal can be anything mutually agreeable, from a year or two to 10 years or more.
The situation is similar to financing a car through the bank. The owner the car uses it as he pleases. The only thing he does not have is the title to the car. The bank holds it until it is paid off.
Your buyer has all the rights and benefits of homeownership, including the tax write offs for the mortgage interest, real estate taxes, etc. The only thing he does not have, is the title, which is held by the trustee of the land trust.
Bottom line? You have sold your house for more than the fair market value and received all or most of your original equity at closing, with any balance of the higher price due and payable when the new owner gets his own mortgage or when he sells the property.
It is not unusual for you to make two or three times more profit than you would have walked away with in a sale to a normal buyer.
If your new buyer fails to keep the property up or fails to make his payments, you notify the trustee and he is evicted, with no costly or time consuming foreclosure needed.
You simply find another Phantom Buyer with another down payment and start over.
The land trust is a little known device used by wealthy property owners for hundreds of years to protect their assets and provide complete privacy for their property dealings.
Since the land trust is not well known in all parts of the country, and requires meticulous adherence to the rules, you may have to seek out a specialist.
It could mean doubling your profits on the sale of your home!
Bill Young is a real estate investor and educator. To learn more about land trusts, read Bills article at http://MotivatedSellersOnline.com/LandTrust