How to convince my in laws to let us buy their home

[Amanda Peterson]

My in laws have a home in Southern California that they purchased 20+ years ago. Their mortgage even with a refinance is less than $2200 a month. We have a friend who works for a property management company in the area and comped the house for over 4000 a month as a long-term rental. Clearly this is a killer deal if we can do seller financing. They are not interested in renting it out themselves because they dont want to deal with renting. But, they need a down payment for a mobile home they want to put on their property. They could sell the home for over $900k and have a really good chunk of change in their pocket. But they will likely pay a lot in capital gains since they will be leaving the state.

How would you structure a deal? How would you convince them it is a good deal for them also?

My thought is to offer the sale price they would sell on the MLS with whatever down payment they need to buy the home (we would likely need a private money lender or a loan to pay that) then monthly payments at X amount over X years that would provide the best cash flow for us. We ran the numbers but i can't remember what they are right now. We would prefer to not put a $100k+ downpayment but it seems worth if it we can raise the money.