After a slow couple of weeks from the credit meltdown and stock market crash things really picked up. The 7th Annual Mahncke Park Home Tour was a huge success, click here to read the full story.
Within 3 days last week we had 4 showings on our house and 2 offers resulting in a sale. The buyers are looking for a quick close on Halloween, which is great news for us.
The offer that we accepted included financing via a FHA loan. There is an anti-flipping rule that FHA has where they recommend title seasoning for 6 months. Furthermore – for investors who are selling their property to a retail buyer within 12 months of purchasing it, and the selling price is greater than your purchase price, the FHA might ask you to substantiate the improvements you did to the property with receipts, before and after photos etc.
Under some circumstances only a 90-day seasoning might suffice. Make sure and talk to the buyers’ lender to find out exactly what their requirements are before getting tied up in a contract which could result in an extra 30 days before you can close escrow.
There are many buyers in Texas using FHA loans these days because they can get good interest rates and only put 3-5% down. We purchased this house in late April, did a 3-month rehab and it’s been on the market for 70 days so we just luckily will have the closing date 3 days after a 6 month seasoning period.
This rule was put into place to protect home buyers from mortgage fraud and predatory actions. With the current housing market situation though you would think our Government and the Lenders would make it easier on private investors who in turn are getting families into some of these vacant foreclosures, getting loans off the books and simultaneously bringing back property tax revenue. Selling a house can be as easy or hard as you make it. Lenders sometimes have a lot of control over who your buyer will be.