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Being Gifted House by Parent: Guidance for Getting Guidance

My father in law is getting older and has accepted that he needs some extra help around. Miraculously, this moment of acceptance coincided with my wife and I house hunting and struggling to get financing, and we're more than happy moving to that area. We both live in different parts of Virginia.

We are both successful professionals, her as a well-known artist and I went from the military to IT to college and I'm doing fairly well in the music industry now, so I might pursue that rather than going straight back to a corporate gig. Either way, we both have no debt beyond our current COVID mortgage (golden handcuffs) and two very reasonable car payments, and more than $50k but less than $100k in our collective bank accounts.

A few data points:

- FIL is onboard with either co-owning the property with my wife and I, or us taking total ownership, whichever works better for our collective planned outcome. His intention was to pass the house to us in his will anyways, just figures us being around means that will won't be necessary for a few extra years.

- I am two years in to taking three years off of working to finish my bachelors degree using the GI Bill, and her income has gone down slowly due to a long commute that has taken its toll on her. Both of these will be rectified after moving, I'll graduate and she'll go from a 1.5 hour one-way commute to a 20 minute one, but that has made finding a VA Loan provider difficult and we're currently waiting on information from our mortgage broker and buyer's agent under the assumption that we're still going to shop for a house the old-fashioned way.

- We like both our mortgage broker and realtor very much, came recommended from close friends, and if it's practical to work with one or both of them in this different process, we'd prefer that, but it's not like a deal breaker or anything.

- The house is late 50's, needs updating and some QOL/aesthetic renovation but the bones, infrastructure, roof, foundation, septic, and surrounding property are all in great shape. The property is valued around $480,000.

- FIL is currently in good health and lives off of social security and teaching a few music lessons a week.

Guidance itself is more than welcome, but what I really need to understand what types of professionals I need to enlist to help make these things happen as quickly as is reasonably possible and as smoothly as a big transaction, renovation, and move can be. I've only ever purchased the house we're currently living in, and it was a very easy process at the time with the VA Loan. SO...

Father in law has owned the house outright for decades. Obviously there's some very wrong ways to take ownership of the house/property from him that could impact the long-term home value or even his Medicaid eligibility, so we want to avoid that.

The plan is to build him a mother(father?)-in-law cottage on the property. We don't have the cash in our bank accounts to do this properly right away, so we'd need to figure out some financing options. All options are being considered: ADU, Tiny House on wheels, hell he'd probably love the idea of us buying him a fancy RV and him living out of it.

I am a military retiree and am rated at 100% disability by the VA, so I know there's programs and grants for certain things.

Because we're not going to be paying for the house, we'd like to finance renovating it before we move in or as soon as we move in.

FIL is a stubborn old country boy, wife did set dec in Hollywood for a while, and I'm a former military engineer who grew up in an old victorian, so we are all quite handy. Taking on some projects ourself is part of the plan.

We are planning on renting our current home, as it's in great shape, our mortgage is a pittance, and it's right near multiple military bases. We'll be close enough that I can do anything a property manager can do to save us that money, but I've never rented a house before.

So yeah, what kind of team do I need to assemble to get the ownership, renovation, cottage construction, and old home rental all in place?

Thoughts and guidance from anyone more experienced will be welcomed and appreciated.

submitted by /u/scrundel
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/RealEstate/comments/1udn7sv/being_gifted_house_by_parent_guidance_for_getting/

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