Selling a Home to Your Children
 

We’re interested in anyone’s personal experience with the outcome of selling your (former) home to one of your children? We’re familiar with the “arms length” and “equity gift” issues. We’re especially interested in anecdotal comments about the long terms outcome. Was it a successful or horrible decision? Thx in advance.

Only you know your children. You seem not to be sure that this is the right thing to do. Go with your gut as other's experiences will not have any affect on your particular situation.

Yes, you are correct. It’s a very personal situation and obviously we have reservations that we’ll have to consider. Thanks for listening.

Did they pay cash? Did they get a mortgage and pay you? Did you give them a mortgage? If you give the mortgage then you should be well enough off so that if they did not pay you can cancel the loan.

Are you selling the home for them to live in, or selling your current home and you continue to live in it?

We sold one of our homes here to our oldest. It was a cash deal.

I love my daughter. Money is pretty irrelevant to me so long as I have enough for the basics and the occasional luxury. That being said, the only way I would consider selling her a house would be if she got a loan through a mortgage company or paid cash. I would discount the price of the house well below market value but there is no way I would take on the loan. It just wouldn’t be the worth the battles and bad feelings.

Lending money to a friend or family member is a very bad idea.

Very good option. Collecting from a friend or relative can cause a lot of problems. Discounting from the market value could cover her down payment in the eyes of the mortgage company. Not sure how you would do this to keep the mortgage co happy. The only option I can think of is you give her a gift (cash) and she uses that for the down payment.
The mortgage company may want to see the money in her account before they agree to the mortgage. Lets say the home is worth 100,000 and you would sell it to her for 50,000.(or 50 + 10) That would require a 10,000 down payment (your gift) and a 40000 mortgage. The house should apprise for 100,000 so even if poor credit she should be able to get a mortgage.

Consider transferring to her online brokerage some appreciated stock you have. That will move the capital gains to her and depending on her income she may not have to pay a capital gains tax.

I've been selling my rental properties to my children on land contracts. It helps me with the capital gains tax and gives me income each year without the headaches of being a landlord and it helps my children a great deal financially and they learn to be responsible . So far so good.