House #1: Tenants Leaving

It’s been a long time since I’ve written about The Corn House, our first purchase from two and a half years ago…

We’ve had lease-purchase tenants in the property for nearly two years now; they have been working hard to improve their credit over the past two years, and have consistently paid their rent on time. We had been hopeful they’d be able to qualify for an FHA loan within the next few months, but we just got word from that they’ll be leaving the house come March 1.

It sounds like the family is having some major health and job issues, which certainly makes us sad, as they were both great tenants and very nice people. But, I can’t say that we’re not also somewhat relieved that they’re leaving — the last credit pull (just last week) indicated that they aren’t as close to qualifying for a loan as we hoped they’d be, and we’ve been considering whether it was time to kick them out or at least give them an ultimatum.

The good news for us is that we’ll finally be able to put this house on the market and get it sold once and for all, though it will likely sell for a good bit less than what it would have sold for two years ago when we originally listed it. With the two years of rent payments, I expect we’ll still make a profit on the house, but not nearly the profit we’d have made if we would have sold it under the terms of the lease-purchase that we had.

Regardless, this was our first house, and we always said that it was just a learning experience for us — any profit would just be a bonus. I’d really like that bonus, though… 🙂