Advice Needed on Unique Situation
Question: Okay, maybe it’s not too unique, but I wanted to get your attention. Here’s the story.
Co-signed for my sister’s house (don’t even start) three years ago and now I’m getting screwed. It has been three years of battles, late payments, calls from the mortgage company, etc. I WANT OUT. We are both on the deed. I have contacted an attorney (Euclid, OH), but do not want to spend that amount of money to force my sister to sell the home through the courts. She does not want to leave the house, although she does not want to pay the payment (#$%@!).
I can gurantee that my sister will sign any paperwork to sell the home, but want to do so without the hassle of getting an attorney involved. Are there places/companies/people that purchase homes as is (current market value)? Is there anywhere that I can turn in which we can just sell the home without the hassle of a lawyer, court, etc?
Thanks for any advice you can give.
Answer: The people who run the “i buy houses” ads are looking to buy wholesale. I personally wouldn’t even go there.
The way to sell at market value is listing it with a realtor in the MLS or possibly with a discount broker without the MLS (cheaper, but less exposure to the market). This decision is probably made by how good your market is.
Trying to solve this by selling it yourselves may cause problems. How would the house show to prospective buyers; is it a mess?
Lay it on the line and if sister won’t cooperate, you’re going to be forced to hire an attorney and do a partition sale. You can buy out her interest at the sale and liquidate it yourself.
There are no easy answers here. I cannot give any useful advice here. You are simply screwed, and you are the poster boy on why you never, ever co-sign for a house unless you intend to pay for a house that someone else lives in.
I wonder if you could simply stop paying the payments. The house would go into forclosure. Your sister would be evicted at some point. Then you could buy the house from the bank, hopefully doing a deal where you let the bank earn a bit of profit in return for them writing you the new loan. You still, however, end up owning a house that your probably don’t need.
Related Posts
Filed under: Advice Needed
Leave a Comment
XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
TrackBack URL | RSS feed for comments on this post.