Ed_The_Gypsy
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
We are considering helping DD buy a house in Tucson where she now works in a stable teaching job. Her rent is going to jump shortly and she wil have to move unless we give her some help. There are some credit problems stemming from a failed marriage and we are considering gifting about 30% of the cost to her. We cannot have any agreement that she pay us back but she has offered to give us 30% of the sale when she does sell it.
We don't have a lot in our retirement funds but we do have some cash from a very lucrative foreign assignment this year.
I am wondering if it would be better for us to simply buy the house ourselves and rent it to her at roughly market rates. It would benefit her in that it would be cheaper than her coming raised rent and it we would have no need to raise the rent ever. We would retain control of our capital and have a place to stay when we visit her. Because of her situation and our situation, we could close the deal a lot faster if we bought it outright. It might be the only way to get a house for her as well. She is in the process of trying to qualify to buy.
We could conceivably buy a slightly bigger, more re-saleable house than she could buy. We could camp there in the winter to get away from the cold and rain.
I am wondering if this can be considered a business or an investment? Could we deduct trips twice a year to monitor the property? I am planning to open a small, unrelated business anyway. Would it be better to buy the house through the business? I imagine that as a proper business, we could report a good payment record to the credit bureaus and help her damaged credit.
I know retirement funds cannot be used this way. This would be purchased by cash and use of our now-paid-off HELOC. We could pay off the loan when we sell our house to downsize in a couple of years.
I do not even know where to start looking for these answers. Is someone here knowledgeable about such things? I know that some people have bought condos where their kids can live while going to college, but I don't know if this sort of thing qualifies as an investment or a business.
Thanks.
We don't have a lot in our retirement funds but we do have some cash from a very lucrative foreign assignment this year.
I am wondering if it would be better for us to simply buy the house ourselves and rent it to her at roughly market rates. It would benefit her in that it would be cheaper than her coming raised rent and it we would have no need to raise the rent ever. We would retain control of our capital and have a place to stay when we visit her. Because of her situation and our situation, we could close the deal a lot faster if we bought it outright. It might be the only way to get a house for her as well. She is in the process of trying to qualify to buy.
We could conceivably buy a slightly bigger, more re-saleable house than she could buy. We could camp there in the winter to get away from the cold and rain.
I am wondering if this can be considered a business or an investment? Could we deduct trips twice a year to monitor the property? I am planning to open a small, unrelated business anyway. Would it be better to buy the house through the business? I imagine that as a proper business, we could report a good payment record to the credit bureaus and help her damaged credit.
I know retirement funds cannot be used this way. This would be purchased by cash and use of our now-paid-off HELOC. We could pay off the loan when we sell our house to downsize in a couple of years.
I do not even know where to start looking for these answers. Is someone here knowledgeable about such things? I know that some people have bought condos where their kids can live while going to college, but I don't know if this sort of thing qualifies as an investment or a business.
Thanks.
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