Our buyer has a USDA loan: When to hang on and when to walk?

[breeinmo.]

Oh no, I'm so sorry. I totally agree with you on no extensions or no more than one maybe. I sold my parents home in 2010, and our 1st "buyers" killed the deal at the last hour. Those %#$% said in FRONT of the lender about how they were planning on renting out the house. Their loan demanded they live in the home. I stupidly gave them months and months of extensions, lesson learned. I had never had these problems selling my own homes so this was new to me.


I hope you find out the details on why your buyers failed, I'd be mad someone missed it. I don't see why its private information, our realtor told us all details as far as I know. I'd want to know if the buyers were trying to pull a fast one. Hope you get a higher price and a super fast sell, you deserve all cash.

[Ohio to Florida]

I'm sorry you had such a bad experience trying to sell to buyers using a USDA loan. My husband and I have purchased two homes and looking to purchase our next home using a USDA loan. We have also advertised each time that both houses are eligible for USDA loans and we have no problem selling to buyers using a USDA loan.

We have loved purchasing our homes with USDA loans; in fact we see it as the best kept secret! I tell all my friends looking to buy a home about this option. We have the income to make the monthly payments without any problems but are not able to come up with a large down payment. USDA loans do take longer to close. I believe both of ours took 6-8 weeks compared to what you usually hear of 30 days or less. It can be frustrating to wait but shouldn't be any problems with the buyers closing if they do not do anything to wreck their credit after the pre-approval.

Both of these houses we purchase are in Ohio so there may be differences in other states just because the loan is being processed through a state or regional office. With our current home, the Columbus office had their computers crash and they lost all of the work they had done on loans but they worked quickly and it "only" backed us up about 2 weeks. Any realtor working in areas that are USDA eligible SHOULD be knowledgeable of USDA loans and, I feel, has an obligation to warn both the seller and the buyer that it will take longer to close. With all the information, the buyer has a right to accept or reject the offer.

I will also note that one of the homes we purchased was through a dual agent. I can see how this can be an issue at times but fortunately our process went smoothly and it was one of the homes we purchased with a USDA loan.

Doing your homework is always wise but I wanted to let everyone know that USDA loans can be great and your bad experience is not typical.

[wide-eyed]

I see this thread has been revived. We did end up selling our house to another buyer--long story.

Interesting that this thread popped up again, as we just found out a few weeks ago that the bank that botched the USDA loan has failed. Some googling revealed that this bank had actually been in trouble with the FDIC for years, for, among, other things, unethical mortgage lending practices.

If we had known what we do now about that bank, we never would have accepted that buyers' offer.

Lesson learned. If we ever sell the house we now live in, we will be closely scrutinizing the lender that the buyer has chosen, and we will not hesitate for one moment to reject an offer based solely on the fact that we're not comfortable with the track record of the lender.

[Sunflower--girl]

I bought my house with a USDA loan. Don't throw out all USDA offers - I closed in 49 days.