Using Seller Financing to Buy Primary Home

[Dallas Morioka]

Does anyone have any insight on using seller financing to buy their primary residence?

I have a situation where a person I know is moving out of the country and would be looking to put their home for sale in the summer. They live in a semi HCOL area called Torrance (house is in a good zip code 90503). I grew up here and am familiar with the area. The person said they would be willing to talk to me about the house in a few months. I wanted to get different thoughts on potentially using seller finance to handle this deal. A nicely done fully renovated home here is around 1.1-1.3m; this home is a 3 bed 2 bath 1300+/- sqft with a lot of 5500+/- sqft. They said this is an older home, and has had some minor renovations but it probably would need some form of work if comparing it to the fully reno homes in that area. My question again stems around using seller financing to allow them to receive a consistent monthly pay of X amount and delay/lower their tax bill in the short term instead of going through a lender to borrow 800k+ causing my mortgage to be significant part of our income roughly 40-50% of take home -  which we are approved for LOL. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you!!