I happened to stumble across this little home near San Francisco - only $100 million…but there is a slight catch.
“The owner is requiring that the buyer allow him to inhabit the premises until his death.”
Uh, OK - so I fork over the money and then I go live in a Motel 6 until the owner dies and I can move in? My luck, the dude will live to be 127 years old…
Great idea!
I wonder if I can pay in advance for their diamond ring to yank off their dead body as well?
Well that is a big house, I guess the two of us could be roommates. Could be the basis of a wacky sitcom.
If I’m going to spend 100 large to buy the place, I can spend an extra $1000 to have the guy whacked.
Just sayin’.
That reminds me of the guy who contracted to pay Jeanne Calment a monthly sum to take over her apartment after her death. She was 90 years of age at the time, and he only 47, so it must have looked like a safe deal. Unfortunately for him, she was going to wind up living all the way to the age of 122. He’d never actually get to move into the apartment, dying of cancer a couple of years before she did, with his widow having to keep up the payments.
I remember when that story hit the news and went viral, mostly as an item of curiosity.
But it was accompanied by a more serious legal explanation: In France, this is a common way to fund retirement. You agree to bequeath your house to someone who pays you a monthly fee till you die. Both sides usually benefit–the elderly person has enough money to live in dignity, and the buyer gets a cheaper house.
Then the news articles sometimes explained why this is not done (and I think is not legal) in America: because you are not supposed to give someone a financial incentive to have you killed.
Now, that shows something about 2 different cultures 
Interesting. Could you move the person into their own wing of the house? I have seen some amazing large houses here that are multigenerational where each segment of the house was built to hold a different part of the family. [one I went to visit belonged to some cousins - the original house was built in the mid 1800s, and when the kids started getting married and having families they would build on another part of the house for that couple to have some privacy. The central core of the house had the kitchen, dining room, formal and informal living rooms and some smaller rooms that were used as libraries/offices/whatever. Nice big ‘sickroom’ off the kitchen area - lots of kids got born in there.]
Though depending on the other person, I wouldn’t mind sharing the living space - though who would pay the servants?
I think I’ll take the CitySpire penthouse in NYC instead. No waiting if you’ve got the cash.
Isn’t this what a lot of people do with reverse mortgages?
Not really. I used to think that in a reverse mortgage the lender would take possession of the home when the borrower died, but in fact that’s almost never the case. In most cases the issuer of the reverse mortgage doesn’t want or get the property itself. When the owner of the house dies or moves they (or their estate) have to pay off the balance on the reverse mortgage (including accrued interest) by selling the house or refinancing it.
It sounds like in the cases discussed in this thread the people actually want to take possession of the property, not just put a lien on it as collateral for a loan.
I really wouldn’t want to actually live in NYC - I would just visit and stay in a nice hotel. Though I vaguely remember that 2 of the Newport ‘cottages’ are up for sale currently.
I take it back - 7 are.
Also, reverse mortgages are usually limited to something like 40% of the available equity, to avoid the scenario where penniless pensioners are being put out onto the street by cold hearted bankers.
Whether the owner passes away or moves into care, those with power of attorney get to decide to sell and pay off the debt, or refinance and pay off the debt, as they see fit. If the owner is being moved into more intensive care, there will still be funds available.
Uh, nothing in this case says that you can’t move in after buying it. It just says that you can’t evict the previous owner. He’s going to live there too.
Why not?
Manhattan is fabulous. I live in the suburbs of NJ and I wish I could afford to live there. If you’re really rich you can afford private schools and getting away from the heat during the summer. Then you have the rest of the year to visit all the museums, eat at some of the world’s best high end and low end restaurants and get season tickets for the opera and the ballet. Just sitting in Times Square and people watching is great fun.
I’m a native from Queens and I love the place. Maybe one day I’ll win the lottery and have a pied-a-terre instead of a long bus ride.
Zsa Zsa Gabor recently sold her mansion with the proviso she be allowed to remain there for 3 years or that her husband be allowed to remain 1 year after her death if she dies within the first 2 years. (Zsa Zsa is in her 90s, an amputee, and her mind is gone, but her Eurotrash 56th or whatever husband gets the benefit of it.)
The Calment story was my favorite about a very old woman’s Paris apartment until this one: the reopening of an apartment sealed since WW2.
My fraternal grandparents sold their small farm to a relative with the condition that they could remain in the house until they died.
He built a ranch house on the property and years later tore down the old farmhouse after my grandmother went into a nursing home. My grandad had died a few years earlier.
It worked out well. My grandparents never had much money in their lifetime. Grandad was a sharecropper and didn’t get his own land until he was in his forties. At least they had a little money from the sale for retirement.
Different people like different things. I live in Brooklyn and work in Manhattan and love every second of it, but I fully intend to retire to the mountains in Nevada and become a hermit. (They still have hermits, right?)
My office is in Times Square. It’s less fun when you have to commute through a daily horde of tourists while being assaulted by Elmos.
Huh. I can see the price tags for most of those properties, but number 5, “Beacon Court Duplex, New York” seems out of place. All the other properties are beautifully decorated and furnished, but this one looks like the atrium from a library in a mid-range university.
When I was in high school, my parents bought an acre with a ramshackle little house on it, with the provision that the seller could bring a trailer up behind the avocado trees and live in it as long as he chose. He had been getting cold feet about the sale and this was a compromise that everyone could live with.
I think he stayed about three years. He had been holding the note and by then was pretty confident that the payments would be regular. Not sure where he moved. Or why it took him three years to find a place and let go.
He was a quiet guy. Dad had to grit his teeth over him overwatering the trees, but that was Dad. He went from knowing nothing about taking care of trees, to reading up on it, to being sure that he knew exactly what should be done.
A few years after the seller moved, Mom & Dad renovated the place. They left the foundation and one wall, to keep the building permit cheaper, and basically built a bigger house. They loved that thing and were very content with the deal they had struck to get it. It was one of the last acres left in an area that was being developed into four bedroom houses with postage stamp sized front and back yards.
When my grandma was trying to sell her house a few years ago, somebody offered her a deal like that. Ten percent below the asking price, with the promise that he would keep the house and land (Grandpa was originally a farmer, and even after her retired and sold a bunch of land, they still had quite a bit) in good condition and she could live in the house for as long as she wanted to/was able. The prospective buyer was in his late forties and had no intention of occupying the house until his retirement. Grandma was just about to turn ninety, and it was already becoming obvious that with Grandpa gone, the house was too much for her to handle alone.
She turned the offer down. She claimed it was because he came in below the asking price, but we all knew she just really wasn’t ready to leave yet. Which she wouldn’t have had to, but nobody could convince her of that. :rolleyes:
One is a libertarian upstart twentysomething internet billionaire. The other an republican crotchety old man old money oil tycoon. Their only commonality is their disdain for the huddled masses.
Needs a snappy title.