EasyKnock

How Sell & Stay Works

By Tom Burchnell
how sell & stay works

Sell & Stay is a residential sale-leaseback program. At its most basic, that means you sell your house to us, then rent it back. How does Sell & Stay work? Read on to better understand each step of the Sell & Stay process.

You Fill Out the Form to See If You Qualify for Sell & Stay

While we don’t require your credit score or a certain amount of income, we do need to make sure that your home qualifies for our program. In order to make sure Sell & Stay works for you, you will fill out the qualification form and we’ll let you know whether you’ll be able to participate in the Sell & Stay program.

We’ll Write Up a Contract

If you decide Sell & Stay works for you, we’ll write up sale and lease contracts. This basically combines the processes you’d go through while selling and renting a home, making one conditional on the other. We can close on the sale and leaseback in as little as 21 days. While you don’t need to get a lawyer to represent your interests, we highly suggest that you do.

You Get Your Money

How Sell & Stay works revolves around your home equity and home value. We pay you a large portion of your home equity. Your home equity is the money that you have invested in your home, the difference between your home’s market value and the amount you owe on your mortgage.

You Are No Longer Obligated to Your Mortgage Company

When you sell your home to us with Sell & Stay works by clearing you of your mortgage and therefore a mortgage payment. We own your home and that means you don’t have mortgage debt. However, you’ll have to pay rent every month just like you would if you rent any other home.

How Sell & Stay Works: Continue Living in Your Home

When you take part in EasyKnock’s Sell & Stay program, we write up a lease contract while we’re working out the details of buying your home. The two go hand in hand. One of the conditions of you selling us your home is that we are obligated to rent it back to you so long as you hold up your end of the lease contract. It’s essentially the same as renting any other home, except it’s the home you used to own.

While you’re living in the home under the lease agreement, Sell & Stay works by covering the property taxes. You are required to handle basic maintenance on the home like lawn care, snow removal, and appliance maintenance. You don’t need home owner’s insurance anymore but would need to get a renter’s insurance policy to protect your belongings.

You Can Move or Buy Back Your Home at Any Point

How does Sell & Stay work when you are ready for the next step? If you decide you don’t want to live in the home anymore, that’s alright! You just give us permission to put the home on the market and we’ll give you the difference between your initial equity check and the sell-out value. You don’t even necessarily have to turn over control over the selling process. If you want, you can set the value, choose the realtor, and make other decisions pertaining to the selling of the home. We let you out of the remainder of the lease if you sell early.

You can also buy your home back. You’d pay us a cost laid out in the initial contract either in cash or by getting a new home loan. You’d no longer be obligated by the lease, and you’d own your home again.

Key Takeaways

If you’re interested in how Sell & Stay works, EasyKnock can help, but it’s important that you understand what to expect with the process before you agree to it. Speak with your lawyer and financial advisor before moving forward.

Topics:
EasyKnock
Sale-Leaseback
Sell & Stay
Tom Burchnell
Written by Tom Burchnell
Director of Product Marketing
Disclaimer

This article is published for educational and informational purposes only. This article is not offered as advice and should not be relied on as such. This content is based on research and/or other relevant articles and contains trusted sources, but does not express the concerns of EasyKnock. Our goal at EasyKnock is to provide readers with up-to-date and objective resources on real estate and mortgage-related topics. Our content is written by experienced contributors in the finance and real-estate space and all articles undergo an in-depth review process. EasyKnock is not a debt collector, a collection agency, nor a credit counseling service company.