Owner Occupancy and a Bad Situation

[Jeff Elwood]

I'm in a rough situation. I bought my single family house in December with the full intent of sticking it out and making this place my home. I began improvements, and started making friends in the new area. My health took a turn for the worse, and my performance on the job suffered greatly because of the treatment.  My performance went from top notch to bottom scraper.  I was pushed off to a client site job where I was basically doing next to nothing and working in a concrete back room. The client site became a toxic work environment where an individual was putting words into my mouth and trying to disparage me to others. I could go on and on. 

I started looking for another job and could not find anything locally. 

I used two recruiters in town (upstate NY) starting in January to find job locally, but my skills are very specific. They turned up nothing, not even a job description. I started getting lots of pressure from my work - they were asking me about my dosages of medication and when my treatment would be finished. They retroactively changed their sick policy to try to get rid of me. I decided to interview out of state, and found a job within a week.  I signed an offer.  

I resigned from my old job before they could fire me and took the new one. I am driving to my new place, well across the country, (just a small apartment) in 2 weeks.  I'm kinda committed at this point to leaving.  I have no job here, and a job there starting soon.  

I am now trying to handle what to do with my house.  I just bought it in December ( but rented it from the seller before purchase because the closing took so long)  I had no intention when I purchased it of leaving this soon.  

The house is an FHA mortgage. I did sign an Affidavit of Occupancy.

1.  Can I rent the property out?    I talked to a property management company.  They can rent it out well above what i paid for it.  The loan company, PennyMac, will certainly find out if I get landlord insurance.   

2.  Can I sell it from out of state?  Now that I'm looking through the forums about this question I'm starting to get very scared that I may not even be able to sell it.  Does the owner occupancy clause prevent me from selling?  It looks like I might break even given the improvements to the property and the time that it was purchased vs the optimal time in April.   I might end up having to take out a personal loan to cover a difference.  

I was up until 1 am last night searching this forum but most situations pertain to people trying to bend the rules to rent out a triplex.  I was hoping someone could help!    

Thanks

Jeff

[Ranga Ramanathan]

See this as a great opportunity you can talk to your mortgage company and explain your situation, I am pretty sure they would rather have you rent out the home and pay your mortgage regularly than foreclosing because you could not pay. 

Have you considered refinancing your home as an investment property?

Selling the home from out of state is not very difficult just find a good realtor, since you just bought the house you can expect to incur some loss due to broker commission etc..