Buying Real Estate as a Retiree

Now that you are retired, you should feel relieved.  Even though, at your age, you naturally wake up with the sunrise, you can sit at your kitchen table in your bathrobe and drink coffee for as long as you want instead of rushing out the door to commute to work in rush hour traffic.  You can run errands during business hours any day of the week, not just on days when you don’t have to work.  You have not had this much time to sit with your friends and shoot the breeze since you were a teenager.  Even better, you retired because you could afford it, not simply because your body gave out, so you are among the lucky few.  Somehow, you don’t feel relieved, though.  When you look around at your closet full of work clothes and your neighborhood full of stressed-out commuters, all you feel is old.  You need a change of scenery.  Selling your house and buying a new one means a lot of work and a lot of uncertainty, no matter your age, but if you go through the process when you are retired, at least you don’t have to juggle your work responsibilities and your house hunting responsibilities at the same time.  For help navigating the challenges of buying real estate as a retiree, contact a Bronx real estate attorney.

Should You Sell Your Empty Nest and Buy in Cash?

Real estate is expensive, and the only way to afford a down payment on the purchase of a house is to use the proceeds of the sale of your previous house.  The only way to afford to pay the full purchase price of the house up front is to use the proceeds of the sale of a house where the mortgage is already paid off, unless you are so rich that you have something to hide.  In other words, if you pay for a house in cash, you are either a money launderer or an old geezer.  You may have the perfect opportunity to pay cash for your forever home if you bought your empty nest in the Bronx in more innocent times and financed it with a fixed rate mortgage, eventually paying it off.  The proceeds of your Bronx home could afford you a modestly sized house in the Sun Belt.

Mortgage Loans for Seniors Are Not as Macabre as They Sound

What if the sale of your current home doesn’t leave you with enough money to pay in full for a new house?  Retirees can get home mortgage loans, too.  Just don’t think too much about how old you will be when the loan matures; that isn’t what lenders are thinking about.  With your senior-sized down payment, the mortgage amount will not be that much, and your retirement income should be sufficient to make the monthly payments.

Schedule a Confidential Consultation With a Bronx Real Estate Attorney

A real estate lawyer can help you if you are considering selling your house and buying a new one after you retire.  Contact Cavallo & Cavallo in the Bronx, New York to set up a consultation.

Source:

cnn.com/2024/06/01/success/buying-house-in-retirement-mortgage/index.html?iid=cnn_buildContentRecirc_end_recirc