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Updated over 14 years ago,
Question on Owner Occupancy, Rent, Seasoning
My wife and I are under contract to purchase a property (single family home on tax record) that has a guest house. Both the guest house and the main house are currently rented out by the current owner.
Being a young couple with no children yet, we are thinking of moving into the guest house (1/1) instead of the main house and continue renting out the main house so that we can have a bigger chunk of the mortgage being subsidized by the rent of the main house. We will be taking up owner-occupant conventional loan for this property. We do have three concerns:
1. If we decide to move to another property (eg. if we get pregnant, etc...) in the near future and rent out the guest house as well, how long do we have to live in the guest house to satisfy owner occupant requirements before we can move out? Would this be purely dependent on the bank and terms of the loan?
2. The guest house actually has its own address for mail and utilities (separate meters), but on tax record, the guest house is included in the main house under a single address. I am concerned that it will be hard to prove to the bank that we have indeed moved into the property since our address will not be the address of the property that the loan is for. Is this a valid concern? Are there other ways to prove we are actually living there (eg. visit from bank official?)?
3. When we do move out of the guest house in the future to purchase another property, will there be any issue in getting the loan as owner occupant for that new property? Is it likely that the bank for the current property would require change of loan terms to investment property terms?
Thanks for any advice. We're in Texas if that matters.