Best way to hold a property?

[Garrett Culpepper]

Hello and happy Monday. *Lending/mortgage question.* We are in on a local project, completed, but was over the time frame and over budget. Cost due to HML $280k, cost due to GC $17k, ARV 425k. The house was listed about 5-6weeks ago, decent activity, good responses, no offers, the rate dropped twice. Given the current situation and market, we can not afford to continue dropping the price and can not afford to hold it under the current HML waiting for it to sell. The property is currently owned by our LLC. At this point, we would like to rent it out and hold it as an investment property (the numbers work for this and would cash flow about $400/mo).

What would be our best option to minimize out of pocket expenses on the deal? We need to pay off the HML at 280k and would need about an additional 17k to pay off the GC and have another 10k or so in final costs. In discussing options, know that we could pay out of pocket for the final expenses if we absolutely needed to until we were able to do a cash out refi/heloc in the future but would prefer an option where we could fund this as well.

Can we refinance out and leave the property in the LLC? Can/should we refi out into our personal names? Can/should we buy the property in our own names; and if so, would it be best as a "secondary home" or an "investment property." We are open to any and all options/opinions. Just not sure what we can and can not do, what would be in our best interest, and seem to run into some roadblocks since it is owned by the llc. Thank you!

[Whitney Hutten]

@Garrett Culpepper All of those strategies might work.  Have you talked to a conventional or commercial lender to understand what they will offer you right now?  Knowing what is truly on the table as far as options (rather than speculating) is probably the best first step.  

My gut tells me if you want to hold this as "a second home" you will need to refi in your personal name. If you want to refi as an investment property, you will need to refi into the LLC. While the second home option might have lower interest rates, if you aren't living in the property you may be committing mortgage fraud, so this is why you want the lender involved.

My Q to you is, is this really a property you want to hold and put in the costs to refi out, or if you are honest with yourself, you need to cut bait now and get it moved?  It sucks to lose money on a deal.  But it sucks worse to hold onto a deal you know you should have moved long ago.