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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   2240 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 30, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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How do I get someone to loan me say 500k for a house and I can just pay him 40k up front and make monthly payments to him rather than the bank?

There’s really no incentive for this on his end, just like a good will gesture to me and my family.

I feel if I can meet a billionaire I can talk him into this.

(Is this too dumb of a question for Sunday dumb question thread?)

What's the incentive supposed to be on your end instead of just using a bank?

That would be one of my first questions if you approached me for money!

I can tell you when I ruminated about this I wanted a person to make my interest, not a bank.

Then I realized that @Quantumfreakonomics had it right and nobody wanted to make less than the S&P 500 for 30 years, or if they did they'd buy bonds.

I also realized when someone asked for a seller's loan my very first thought was "fuck you, if you can't get a loan from a bank why would I trust you?"

I had my parents loan me part of a down payment at min interest and paid it back within 2 years. Your parents should be able to trust you enough to loan you the money and it's better for them to lever you up now than when they're dead.

"Banker won't give me money" due to bad history/cash business (often 'I make shitloads on grow-ops' IME) is the usual reason.

My immediate question would be 'Why do you need to spend half-a-million on a house?'

If someone handed me half a million dollars, I'd put 400k of that into investment and use the remaining 100k to start building a small home. (I'm already ahead of the curve as I have property to put said house on, but still.)

Besides, even if you did get the money, you're paying property tax, maintenance, insurance, upkeep on a house that costs half a million dollars. Talk about a bad investment.

How, uh, old are you? The median price of homes sold in the US last year is 400k.

I'm not a boomer, if that's what you're asking.

Doing a casual perusal of online available real estate shows prices comfortably in the 150,000 range where I'm at.

Not everyone on the Motte lives in a trendy international cosmopolitan area, you know.

Not everyone on the Motte lives in a trendy international cosmopolitan area, you know.

If you think that you can get anything in a trendy international cosmopolitan area for anything close to 500k...

Again, 400k is the median sale price across the entire country. 500k is, like, 25% "trendier" than the median. It's an absolutely unremarkable price. It's much closer to the norm than the 175k you see in your area.

For what it's worth, it isn't just the trendy international cosmopolitan cities (ie NYC, Chicago and LA) which have insane house prices in the US. I live in Denver (nice city but not really trendy) and we have the same problem.

FWIW, housing is ludicrously expensive in other parts of the world, too.

500k would just about suffice for building a bitch-basic one-family home here.

My immediate question would be 'Why do you need to spend half-a-million on a house?'

...because that's what houses cost???

I open Zillow for my city and I see the following listings:

These aren't McMansions; they are completely normal suburban houses in South Florida.

Even empty lots are going for a quarter mil, not 100k.

There is a reason millenials are waiting for a housing crash before buying our first house.

...because that's what houses cost???

Not where I'm at. I'm seeing houses in subdivisions for as low as 175,000, and that would still be stupidly over-sized for what I'd need.

Owner financing exists. That’s the closest to what you’re talking about.

Why not skip all this and talk the billionaire into giving you a house free and clear?

If you can meet a billionaire, someone who is currently a complete stranger to you, you could convince him to trust you a whole lot. Are you the most charismatic person in the world? How would that play out? Just curious...

I was thinking we would just have a nice rapport and we’d talk about work and the American Dream and he’d think about all the murderous hijinks he had committed in the past and he’d do this to make himself feel better.

Like the Catholic Church used to do … pay for absolution ?

The Catholic Church did offer indulgences for donating money to the church(indulgences now are only available for spiritual works). But this wasn’t because people thought that forking over cash just generally made up for their sins. It was because people thought that the Catholic Church, specifically, could obviate the punishment for sin. I mean I’m guessing you don’t believe this, but the people who bought indulgences did.

Lacking this basis makes your plan less successful.

The 30-year mortgage is not an economically sound transaction when considered as a bilateral agreement between a lender and a borrower. It only makes sense in the context of the greater financial system and with the explicit backing as a core policy goal of the government. No one would lend money under these circumstances

WHEREAS the real property generally known as 123 Main Street, Townsville, KS costs approximately 500 k$; and

WHEREAS the person generally known as Mihow wishes to buy the property; and

WHEREAS Mihow has liquid wealth amounting to approximately 40 k$; and

WHEREAS the person generally known as Elongated Muskrat has liquid wealth in extremely large amount;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that, not more than seven days after the signing of this agreement, Muskrat shall send to Mihow, by wire or by cashier's check, 460 k$, creating a debt owed by Mihow to Muskrat; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that, not more than 60 days after the signing of this agreement, Mihow shall purchase the property; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that, on the first day of every month after the signing of this agreement, the debt shall accrue interest at an APR (annual percentage rate) equal to the prime rate most recently published by Everytown Bank, NA (compounded monthly); and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that at least N/30 of the debt shall have been repaid by Mihow not more than N years after the signing of this agreement, for every integer value of N from 1 to 30; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that, if Mihow fails to repay the debt, then it shall be secured by the property first, and by the remainder of Mihow's property second.

In witness thereof, Mihow and Muskrat affix their signatures below.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is a shitpost.

I think think this is a case of "knowing somebody": I know people who have had mortgage contracts to non-bank entities. Sometimes it's family with money doing the underwriting (there's an element of trust here not to be entered into lightly), but some older family have told me about buying a house from its existing owners this way to give them a fixed income to downsize. The latter seems less likely to find in this less-personal age.

Part of the problem is that mortgages are finicky contracts: you have to worry about getting paid (employment, cost of living), and the continued valuation of the underlying asset (2008 anyone? Or just vanilla gross property damage even). It's not a business I'd want to be in privately with the general public.

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