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Are you relocating, but having trouble selling your current home?

If you are relocating because of your job, yet having trouble selling your current home, you may have more options available than you first thought.

A very popular loan program that allows for a small down payment of only 3.5% is offered through the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). An FHA loan will help you buy a home with the smaller down payment, flexible credit guidelines, and for the most of this year, a better interest rate than traditional conventional loans. However, FHA will only allow you to have one home with an FHA loan at a time.

If you are called on by your employer to move to another location, and your current home, which you bought with an FHA loan, is not selling fast enough, and you do not have a big down payment for the next house, what do you do?

Don't worry! If you are relocating to an area outside a reasonable commuting area from your current home, FHA has an exception to their rule of owning only one home with an FHA loan. In this case, you are allowed to purchase another house using an FHA loan, with the low down payment of only 3.5% of the purchase price.

This can be a pleasant surprise for a lot of us, who never thought we would have enough money to own more than one house; you can keep your current home and rent it out! In a buyers' market, it is often faster and easier to find a tenant than sell your current home, plus, you can make a profit on the rent!

Now, you have two houses, both purchased with a low down payment, and you have a tenant making your mortgage payment on your former residence, plus paying a little extra. You have just used the power of leverage to nearly double your net worth, and have a nice place to live. Not to mention your relocation is that much less stressful.

By taking advantage of this exception to FHA rules, you are able to focus on your new job, rather than stress about selling your old home, and not having enough money to put down on a new home. This should make both you and your employer very happy.

Talk to a mortgage loan professional in your area. Get the facts. Good things can happen when you are buying or selling a home, no matter what you might hear on TV.

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