Advice: Living in NYC trying to finance mortgage for my mother
This is my first post to r/personalfinance, though I've followed some of the amazing posts on here in the past. I am looking of for the best options to finance a mortgage for a home that my mother and nephew will live in, that I will not. The payments will be done mostly by me with assistance by my mother. She currently pays $350 for rent and that $350 will go to the new mortgage if we find a proper option. I have little financial knowledge. Also, this will be my first mortgage. I understand that since I will not live in the home, I can not go after a primary residence. I will only be able to visit at best twice a year for short periods of time.
I can gather up 10k for downpayment and/or starting expenses, and am looking for homes/condos in the 80k-125k range. My brother has a decent amount of experience in remodeling and will be able to help in that aspect. Most of the homes in this range in the area of Montana where we live are a 100 years old. I can put 600 of my own money towards this monthly for a total of $950 with my mothers assistance.
Hard facts:
-- I live in NYC
-- Family lives in MT
-- Mother can contribute $350
-- I can contribute $600
Background for those interested:------------------------------------------------------------
To start off, I lived in MT with my family in a one bedroom home. It was four of us at the time. I was putting myself through college and stacked up a decent debt through student loans. I finally graduated with suma cum laude, shortly there after, with my little nestegg I moved to NYC and found a great job. This was about 5-1/2 years ago.
The duplex my mother is currently living is has been in the family since before I was born, there are pictures of me 36 years ago as a baby on the same carpet as the carpet on the floor now. Her father owned it, but passed away a couple of years ago, and his wife took over the responsibilities. This is where the issues start. Being that that home has some family history behind it and my mom is highly sentimental, she is reluctant to move. On top of that, the home is not well maintained. There is a HUGEEEE laundry list of things that are not working in the home. Some of the larger issues being the bathtub, cold water for the kitchen sink, stove, foundation, ect... My mother is disabled and lives off disability checks, both of her hands are paralyzed. She barely makes ends meet on her budget, I assist her there. She takes care of one of her 4 grandchildren full time, and the other 3 part time. They are practically over her house every day. She is content with all of this by the way. She has had her rent raised a couple times since her father passed away, and is scared to ask for many of these things to be fixed in fear of getting her rent raised more. She will not be able to afford it.
I haven't been home since I left for NYC, focusing very much on digging myself out of a hole and gaining general stability. It took me 5 years, but I finally got my credit score up to 700 (even with 70k current debt of student loans). For the first time I went home just a couple weeks ago to spend time with the family and actually have our first little family vacation ever. Which was a great experience for all of us.
While I was there I stayed with my mom in the house I knew so well, but had forgotten being in NYC living well, I realized how not great the living conditions were. A one bedroom is not big enough for a 15 year old and a 65 year old. I have NO idea how we made it work with more people. I was there in the past as well and picked up a lot of the responsibilities for making sure living was suitable. Even with my efforts at the time however, in hindsight they were not. Being home for this vacation made me realize I need to get my mom out of this home, hopefully while doing so we can gain a home as an asset as a family for our younger family members.
Posted Jul 16, 2017, 9:22 PM UTC · edited