The deal ended when she read her own due-on-sale clause out loud

I don't buy fast. I looked at a subject-to deal for four months before I said no to it, and the moment it ended was a woman reading her own mortgage aloud in her dining room.

Background. Divorce, house in a first-ring suburb, her name alone on a loan at 2.875 from a 2021 refinance, 244k balance, house worth maybe 320. She wanted out from under the payment and she wanted to keep her credit intact, which is exactly the situation where this structure does something a listing can't do in that time frame. I had the equity number worked out at 44k, structured as 14 down and the rest on a note to her over three years.

What I did before we got to price was print her copy of the security instrument and ask her to find the transfer of the property paragraph and read it to me. Not to test her. I wanted to hear her say the words, because I've watched people nod at that risk and then act shocked eleven months later, and I didn't want to be the buyer in that story.

She got about three lines in, the part about the lender requiring immediate payment in full, and she stopped and said, so they could do this to me and I wouldn't even own it anymore. Yes. That's the shape of it. In practice lenders very rarely call a performing loan, I'd have a refinance line and cash reserves against the balance, and she'd have every one of those commitments in writing with her own attorney reviewing it before signing. All true. All still an answer where the risk lands on her and the rate benefit lands on me.

She thought about it for nine days and said no. She listed it and took less money than my structure would have paid her, and she was right to, because she'd never have slept.

I'd do the reading exercise again. It cost me the deal and it's the only part of the four months I'm sure about.