Bridge loans
 

Has anyone ever had one?

Basically you are purchasing a house before you have a contract to sell your existing home and this loan allows you to do that. More or less you are taking on both loans with one lender until your existing home finally sells.

Not saying I am going to do this but I would love to hear from someone who has.

They are pretty much a thing of the past. In my opinion you would be crazy to buy a home in this market without selling your existing unless you can easily afford both payments (something most people can not do in this economy). Bridge loans, if you can find them are typically only for 3-6 months.

Yeah, that is kind of what I am expecting to hear. Sucks because we just had the perfect house fall right in our laps and probably won't even get a shot at it.

Make them an offer with a contingency on your house selling. That's what we did and it worked for us.

Can't. Its a foreclosure and the bank owns it.

Yeah plenty of them. Not a good market to do it. Unless you don't mind having both mortgages for quite a while.

There'll be a bunch more to choose from soon. The problem is the more there are the less you'll get for your current home.

I wonder if the bank would entertain a trade. Seems like a deal that works for you and the bank would be a worthwhile thing to look into. Bridge loans will make you lie awake nights in a cold sweat. Been there, done that. Never again. But that was a number of years ago.

yep. me neither, not a good experience. A fella would be risking a lot to do it now.

get yours on the market ASAP if you want to try. A foreclosure can still take months to sell.

worst case, you pull yours off the market.

Would be shocked if the bank went for it. First, it doesn't get them much -- they're trying to reduce bank owned real estate. Swapping one parcel for another doesn't help them on that front.

Second, it's non-standard, so the hurdles you have to overcome are significant. Most banks aren't exactly "nimble."

I am helping my sister structure a deal in this situation on some land in WA. You still have some options here:

A.) If your house was paid for OR if you could get a HELOC (Home Equity Line of Credit) against your place for enough to buy the REO (Bank property) then you could use that to make a cash offer. You would then have to sell your place, rent it, or sell it on contract with payments sufficient to cover the debt load.

B.) Have a financial friend make an offer to buy the REO property. If a friend of yours who you trust, had cash (Money Market, HELOC, or they could even buy the house in a self directed IRA using Entrust or Equity Trust Co.). Then could buy the house, hold it until your place sells and then you pay them an uplift to conver their interest costs and carrying costs.

There are other options, but those seem to be the most straightforward.

Regulation will not allow a bank to do this, ie. collateral exchange on a single family.

PM Pink, this is right in her wheelhouse. PM Phil if you can’t get ahold of her.
They were a great help to Mrs. Radar and I when the perfect house fell right in our laps that we probably wouldn’t even get a shot at, but ended up buying and moving into. ;)

This is probably what we will try to do. Had a Realtor out already today that we trust. That house has been vacant since Thanksgiving and on the market since May. they keep dropping the price and somebody is going to bite.
really hate the thought of watching our dream house slip through our fingers though. ugh