House #1: Update

It’s been a long time since I’ve provided any updates on The Corn House, and I’ve gotten a couple inquiries over the past couple weeks, so here goes…

For those who haven’t been reading this blog for long enough, The Corn House was the very first house we ever purchased. We overpaid a bit, and over-estimated the resale value just a bit, and while we could have sold the house for a small profit after we rehabbed it, we decided to do a lease purchase instead, and try to make a bigger profit even if it took a bit longer to sell.

The lease/purchase buyers have been in the house for over a year now, and they’re fantastic tenants. They pay their rent on time every month, the house is in as good a shape now as it was right after we rehabbed it, and they are still committed to trying to purchase the home once they can get approved for a loan.

Unfortunately, while the buyers are committed to a purchase, they continue to make little mistakes with their credit. Nothing major — and their credit scores continue to increase — but because of the little mistakes, their scores aren’t increasing very quickly and they still can’t qualify for an FHA loan. And with over $7000 saved in escrow that will go towards their down payment, they really want to get this purchase completed (as do we).

My wife had the buyers attend a NACA workshop in April; given the success we’ve had with other NACA buyers, it seemed like it might be a good choice for them. Ultimately, NACA is backlogged, so they can’t get in to talk to a counselor until the beginning of June, but we’re hopeful that if things go well, they may be able to get NACA approval for a loan by late June (NACA doesn’t have credit score requirements, so there are no impediments there).

Because they have been such good tenants, and because they have so much saved in escrow, we want to do everything we can to help the buyers get into this house. Even if it means extending our contract another couple months. I’m hopeful that they’ll be able to buy the house before the end of the summer, but then again, I was hopeful they’d be able to buy it before the end of last summer, too… 🙂

I’ll keep you updated…