Licensing Boat Slips to Pay off Marina Mortgage?

[Account Closed]

BP Family,

I have stumbled upon a deal which could prove to be exceptionally lucrative, assuming my financing plan turns out to be feasible.

The property: A marina on a large lake in Alabama. It has 24 boat slips which rent for a total of $14,500 annually. oh, and there is a small, yet liveable, 3br/2ba house on the property.

The seller is asking $225k, but i think he'll come down to $200k or so, as the property has been for sale a couple years, and it is owned free and clear. (It's all "unearned equity"- it was inherited.)

In any case, let me give you the basics, and then the main question:

Down payment: $40k 

Mortgage balance: $160k

which is $858.91/month or $10,306.92 annually.

taxes are $2,500/year

insurance $2,400.year

so $14,806.92 would be almost entirely covered by boat slip rentals, not to mention

I do understand that this does not come close to meeting the 50% rule, but my wife and i would live there and we both have jobs, so even a little negative cash flow would not hurt us, since we'd have a house payment in absence of the deal anyway. So we could pay for maintenance and the 40k down payment 

Boat slips are in short supply (there is a waiting list) and can be sold for between $12k and $15K in this area, which would yield $288,000 on the LOW end of the range. which would pay off the mortgage and also yield somewhere between $60k and $80k in profit, depending on how quickly we sold them off, i.e., how much mortgage interest we avoided.

However, the financiers of the down payment (we'll call them "Mom" and "Dad" are concerned that it is not legal to "sell the slips" before the mortgage is paid off.

"Selling a boat slip" is really just selling a permanent license to the easement which accesses the slips and also a permanent license to the slip itself. As I understand things from my research on here, I can sell a license to use the property regardless of a mortgage on the actual property (and honestly, the due on sale clause would not even come into play, as i am not transferring an ownership interest in the actual real property. 

So the question, in summary, is: CAN I SELL LICENSES TO THE BOAT SLIPS IN ORDER TO PAY OFF THE MORTGAGE ON THE PROPERTY, or is there something illegal about doing that? (I don't think there is; i just want to give "Mom" and "Dad" some peace of mind.)

Hopefully, some of you have experience in this area. Maybe someone from Florida, Miama, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa, or better yet, someone in Mobile, Spanish Fort, Gulf Shores, Orange Beach (or any other keyword alerts I might be able to catalyze, lol)

And yes, I understand that the generic answer to this is that state laws vary and I should seek the advice of a competent attorney licensed to practice law in my state. I am going to. So save it. Lol. I just like getting investors' perspectives on this kind of thing as well.