Did anyone ever buy a house from family?

Can you share the good, the bad and the ugly?

TIA!

Re: Did anyone ever buy a house from family?

We did years ago. We rented the house from them for a while and then after about 5 years purchased from them. I think that made things go a little smoother. Everyone was amicable in the transaction and we did a full remodel of the first floor after it was purchased. Our family was amazed at the transformation.
My mother purchased the house from her brother. After the purchase, uncle and his wife came over and his wife began pulling out flowers and other assorted plantings that mom had done, because uncle's wife did not like them. This caused a huge fallout between mom, uncle and uncle's wife and they never spoke again. Weird and stupid, but it happened.

Re: Did anyone ever buy a house from family?

We did, from my mom. It was a smooth transaction in regards to closing etc. The only weird part was that we all lived there when the process was going on, so when my mom was leaving it got a bit awkward. You can't exactly give your mom a time frame on when to vacate ! All in all it's fine, sometimes there are little hiccups here and there when it comes to understanding that we now own it and not her. If you have any other questions feel free to FM me.

Re: Did anyone ever buy a house from family?

we bought my ILs house from them. they had to move out of state for FILs job. At the time, DH and i just had a small "starter" house that we were gonna add on to. when ILs had to move we thought "why don't we just buy their house. its bigger and in a great neighborhood. then we don't have to deal with adding on to ours".

its been 5 years, and it really worked out well. ILs had no mortgage left on it. so basically they just put the house in our names and we pay ILs a mortgage payment every month. we pay them interest too for tax reasons, and we both claim it our on taxes every year.
honestly it makes me feel good that if either one of us ever lost our jobs or somethign- we could "take a month off" from paying them... we wouldn't have a big mortgage company or bank putting us in forclosure HAHA this is probably the biggest advantage in our situation.

when we decided to do it our friends all said " I could never do that! I would always feel like i was living in "their" house, not mine". but really its fine.
They didn't really do much updating while they lived here ( they kept it in good shape, but didn't update the look of stuff). SO we really didn't feel bad remodeling to make it "ours" LOL we redid both bathrooms, totally changed the look of our bedroom, redid the liviing room and basement "rec" room, adding cetrail air, redid a lot of the landscaping.... so its definitely "our" house now
they live out of state so when they come to visit they stay for a few days. sometimes i feel like they are too "comfortable" here, since they lived here for so long. But its fine- and they never "complain" about the changes we made. ( just something else to think about- will whoever you buy it from be offended at stuff you change??)

LOL sorry its so long, but you said you wanted to know it all! LOL good luck!! i say go for it- i think its one of the better decisions we made!

Re: Did anyone ever buy a house from family?

We bought my IL's house. I wish we never did it. Granted, we bought in 2003 for a great price so in theory it worked out. But my FIL is CONSTANTLY criticizing any little thing we do. Why didn't you stain this? Why did you paint that? What was wrong with that rug? I want to re-do my kitchen since it is original to the house, but HE keeps saying I just need to paint the cabinets. He is a PITA all the time about all things though, so I should have known better. I have lived here 9 years and I still don't feel like this house is my own.

UGH.

Just know who you are buying from.

Re: Did anyone ever buy a house from family?

Re: Did anyone ever buy a house from family?

We were supposed to by my parent's house (the house I grew up in). We learned the basement has a few major issues and asked for compensation. There were also outstanding CO issues for an extension that was built 15 years prior. We we ended up going to closing and the bank's lawyer found out about he CO problem. We didn't close and that's when I took it as a sign from God not to buy. The house was the home I grew up in but it would have been a money pit. I almost wish we never started the transaction. We weren't in the market to buy at the time but because we didn't buy my parent's house we decided to house hunt. Things are still tough between my parent's and DH. We never all sat down to talk about what happened. And I'm not sure things will ever be 100% again.

ETA: We did move into the house before closing and lived there a few months. It never felt like OUR home.

Message edited 5/8/2012 5:28:34 PM.

Re: Did anyone ever buy a house from family?

Thank you all for your responses....very helpful

Re: Did anyone ever buy a house from family?

FIL offered to sell us his house...with him in it! We saw no purpose in buying a house that would still technically be his. Plus, big time loss of privacy.