Posted by Killer Joe on February 16, 2007 at 09:43:23:
JP,
A bigger issue with your friends plan to buy the house will be the negative cash flow she will have to endure buying a house in Huntington Beach, CA. using a typical mortgage.
There are plenty of property management companies in that area she can pay to watch over the house, so that should not be an obsticle.
Perhaps her uncle could sell it by carring the paper at a discounted rate. Selling the house at todays prices using a low interest rate could net him more money now than waiting to sell later when the prices for that area are lower. SoCal is no longer the hot bed of appreiciation it once was.
Bottom line…this is a dollars and sense situation, there are no absolutes that would keep her from realizing her dream.
A friend of mine recently moved from Huntington Beach, CA to Austraila to get married and live there. Her uncle owns the house in HB(paid cash years ago). She lived there for 15 years while going to school. The uncle does not even live there. He is a worldwide business man and lives in Russia.
The uncle wants to sell the house. She wants to buy it. Is it possible to buy something and live out of the country? She does have credit established here, credit cards, school loans, etc… She wants to buy the house to rent it out while she eventually wants to move back to live in the U.S. Any suggestions?
Re: Buying RE in USA, but live in Austraila - Posted by Ben Carmona
Posted by Ben Carmona on February 17, 2007 at 24:08:40:
I specialize in investment loans, including those for foreign nationals who live out of the country and are buying in the US. Just so happens most of them are from Australia. Two weeks ago I received a phone call from a US citizen that moved there 9 years ago (after meeting his wife in the Marines). He was wanting to buy an investment property here in the US.
His credit scores were high (although not many tradelines opened recently, most were from 9 years ago). Has solid job history and and assets to cover down payment and reserves.
There about 5 lenders that have a really good foreign national program; after speaking to these lenders and my other top investment lenders, I only found 2 that would entertain doing this.
One of the biggest issues was the fact that the address on the credit report would need to be a US based address. The credit reporting agencies brokers use do not have systems set up to pull a US credit report with an international address. So we had to get authorization from the lenders in order to use his sister’s address in OR as the address on the report. Usually if that address doesnt match up with the primary residence on the application, the lender will deny the file.
All of the lenders agreed that this person should be able to get full benefits of still being a US citizen. This means that LTV wouldnt be restircted and rates/costs should be inline as a citizen as well. We were able to find 90% financing. 80% with 1 lender and a second of 10% with another.
The contract was written last week and the loan was just submitted to underwriting. It took a lot of phone calls and explaining to the underwriters but it sounds like it should be ok. This is definitely an out of the box scenario and I explained to my client that there may be some additional questioning by the lender.
So it should be possible depending on her score, employment history, income, and assets.