My grandmother bought the home we lived in the 90s for 90k at a 8% interest rate. I found out she refinanced the house several times from what seems like predatory practices and malicious advice and now owes 250k at 6%. Basically the house I thought was paid off now has 30 mortgage and she is 90. Her grandkids are in the will to inherent the house but do we inherent this mortgage?
You sure do if you want to keep the house. It also sounds like she leveraged the house for some extra cash when she refinanced.
The location cannot be beat. My brothers don’t want to sell because of it. The main issue is while the older grandkids like myself were already looking for a new place the younger ones like my sister (20 years younger) than me have no place to go. I can’t afford to bring them with me even if they wanted to. I dk why she needed more cash. I literally paid for a new roof and add ons over the years.
That’s not necessarily a bad strategy, either. Most people, their home is their major asset, but you can’t really access that value to buy groceries in retirement. Take money out on a new mortgage on the inflated value of the house, buy groceries and pay mortgage with that money, and move in with the kids when/if the money runs out. The bank will take the house in the end, but leaving nothing to the heirs may be better than spending your last years living in your kid’s basement. The whole ‘reverse mortgage’ industry has grown up around just that plan.
Though she didn’t needed to do that. her daughter and adult grand kids live with her. I dk why she did this. We all have jobs. There wasn’t a time she wasn’t getting rent from multiple people.
Do you know where the money went? Sounds like there’s a couple hundred grand in cash floating around out there.