When does my name come off? Nobody at the table wanted to go first.

The login is the actual deal. I've got a seller from a year and a half ago who screenshots the payment confirmation to me every single month like I asked her to. I never asked her to. I've stopped trying to make her stop.

What I get stuck on is the sentence the buyer didn't say out loud, which is what happens if the lender ever demands the balance. Did anyone at that table walk through the plan for that, or was it just understood between the two of them? I keep reading that lenders almost never call it when payments come in on time, and I believe that, and I still can't get past the almost.

Honestly the silence would have ended it for me if I were the seller. Not because the answer is wrong, because nobody had it ready.

Nine grand for a 3.25 loan with 212 on it is a cheap seat. I've paid thirty and been happy. The number depends entirely on how close the guy is to the edge, and he was close.

Who's the named insured on the policy after closing? That's the part I always trip on coming from the build side. The lender has an interest, the deed says one name, the loan says another, and the agent writing the policy has to make all three of those fit on one page.

I came into this room thinking subject-to was a paperwork trick and this reads like an actual relationship you have to maintain for years. That changes the strategy a lot for me.

The daughter on the speakerphone is what six months of reading never prepared me for. Every deal I've modeled has had exactly two people in it.

Went through this a couple of times. So the buyer owns the house and the seller owes the money? I understand the words, I just want to say it back to check I've got it.

@juniper that's the shape of it, yes. Deed moves, loan doesn't.

What I want to know is who actually handles the payments month to month. Does the buyer just log into the servicer's site with the seller's info, or is there a third party that does this for people? Feels like a service somebody runs.

Nine thousand plus closing costs plus whatever reinstatement the two missed payments cost. Canton, was the arrearage rolled into the nine or on top? That's the line I'd have wanted before I wired anything.

The part that sits badly with me is that the seller carries the loan on his credit for years while somebody else's tenant is in the house. He got out of a payment he couldn't make. He didn't get out of the loan.

@beacon there are companies that do exactly that, third party servicing for private and creative deals, and the reason people use them is precisely so the seller can see a statement from a neutral party instead of taking the buyer's word. Half of why I'm reading this room is that the trust problem in these deals is a service problem someone gets paid for.

Where does a seller like that even come from? Two payments behind, not listed yet, not in foreclosure yet. That's a very narrow window and I can't figure out how you're standing in it at the right moment.

I did not know you could buy a house without getting a loan. Genuinely did not know that.

Dad. Just that. I felt that one in my chest, my mother said the same word to me in almost the same tone about a car.

Asking the thing I'd be embarrassed to ask in person. Can that seller change his mind in month four, call the servicer and say he never sold it? Practically speaking, what stops him?

@compass the deed is recorded, so he can't undo the ownership by phone. He can absolutely make your life awful in other ways though.

The one that got me on a similar deal wasn't drama, it was an escrow shortage. Taxes reassessed, payment jumped 140 a month, and the notice went to the seller's address because the loan is still his. He'd moved. I found out when the servicer's autopay pulled the old amount and came up short.

@thicket yes, mail routing is the boring failure mode nobody warns you about. I've done two of these and on the second one I set the mailing address on the servicer account to mine on day one and told the seller in writing that I was doing it, so it wasn't a surprise later.

Studying for the license exam and the thing I'd want to be clear on before I ever sat at a table like that is who has a disclosure duty to whom, since agency rules and required seller disclosures vary by state and some states are much fussier about a licensee's role in a creative structure than others. Anyone doing these should have an attorney in their own state look at the file.

I wanted the version of real estate where a check shows up and I don't get a text on a Sunday. This is not that.

@marlow same. Although the guy checking his login every month for nine months is sort of touching and sort of exactly the reason I'd rather buy something plain with my own boring loan on it.

Is this the same thing as a wrap? I've read both words in the same paragraph twice now and I still can't separate them in my head.

@vellum they're cousins. Subject-to leaves the existing loan alone and the buyer just pays it. A wrap puts a new note on top from seller to buyer at a different rate, and the seller uses the payments coming in to keep paying the underlying loan. Both leave the old loan in place, so both live with the same due-on-sale exposure.

What strikes me from the note side of this is that the servicer's file has no idea any of it happened. The payment posts, the name on the account is the same, the system has nothing to react to.

The thing that will make or break that arrangement isn't the paperwork, and I've learned that from five years of running a business where customers call me when something breaks. It's whether the buyer picks up the phone in month thirty-one when the seller calls about something small. Most people are great in month one.