Is a real estate attorney needed for builder deposit contract?
You are planning on signing a contract for, likely, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and plan on paying, likely, tens of thousands of dollars in a deposit. For a house that is not built yet. This isn't particularly unusual, lots of people do this. But, you need a lawyer. Now, before you sign anything. Your agent may be able to recommend a lawyer, but beware; your agent may have a conflict of interest here. You need to let a lawyer look at it.  Concerns you have include:
As a general rule, diversification means carrying sufficient amounts in cash equivalents, stocks, bonds, and real estate.   An emergency fund should have six months income (conservative) or expenses (less conservative) in some kind of cash equivalent (like a savings account).  As you approach retirement, that number should increase.  At retirement, it should be something like five years of expenses.  At that time, it is no longer an emergency fund, it's your everyday expenses.  You can use a pension or social security to offset your effective monthly expenses for the purpose of that fund.  You should five years net expenses after income in cash equivalents after retirement.   The normal diversification ratio for stocks, bonds, and real estate is something like 60% stocks, 20% bonds, and 20% real estate.  You can count the equity in your house as part of the real estate share.  For most people, the house will be sufficient diversification into real estate.   That said, you should not buy a second home as an investment.  Buy the second home if you can afford it and if it makes you happy.  Then consider if you want to keep your first home as an investment or just sell it now.   Look at your overall ownership to determine if you are overweighted into real estate.  Your primary house is not an investment, but it is an ownership.  If 90% of your net worth is real estate, then you are probably underinvested in securities like stocks and bonds.  50% should probably be an upper bound, and 20% real estate would be more diversified.   If your 401k has an employer match, you should almost certainly put enough in it to get the full match.   I prefer a ratio of 70-75% stocks to 25-30% bonds at all ages.  This matches the overall market diversification.  Rebalance to stay in that range regularly, possibly by investing in the underweight security.  Adding real estate to that, my preference would be for real estate to be roughly a quarter of the value of securities.  So around 60% stocks, 20% bonds, and 20% real estate.  A 50% share for real estate is more aggressive but can work.   Along with a house or rental properties, another option for increasing the real estate share is a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT).  These are essentially a mutual fund for real estate.  This takes you out of the business of actively managing properties.   If you really want to manage rentals, make sure that you list all the expenses.  These include:   Also be careful that you are able to handle it if things change.  Perhaps today there is a tremendous shortage of rental properties and the vacancy rate is close to zero.  What happens in a few years when new construction provides more slack?   Some kinds of maintenance can't be done with tenants.  Also, some kinds of maintenance will scare away new tenants.  So just as you are paying out a large amount of money, you also aren't getting rent.  You need to be able to handle the loss of income and the large expense at the same time.   Don't forget the sales value of your current house.  Perhaps you bought when houses were cheaper.  Maybe you'd be better off taking the current equity that you have in that house and putting it into your new house's mortgage.  Yes, the old mortgage payment may be lower than the rent you could get, but the rent over the next thirty years might be less than what you could get for the house if you sold it.  Are you better off with minimal equity in two houses or good equity with one house?   I would feel better about this purchase if you were saying that you were doing this in addition to your 401k.  Doing this instead of your 401k seems sketchy to me.  What will you do if there is another housing crash?  With a little bad luck, you could end up underwater on two mortgages and unable to make payments.  Or perhaps not underwater on the current house, but not getting much back on a sale either.   All that said, maybe it's a good deal.  You have more information about it than we do.  Just...be careful. The property buys understanding and advising the property proprietor of the date of the culmination of the development venture, flat, estate, house and office. We provide the best service of Real estate purchase and sale contracts. We typically prescribe that customers hold all property for the sake of a Panamanian partnership for resource security and pay to assess reasons. t ought to be noticed that Panamanian common law puts the weight of duty on the dealer to react to the purchaser for lawful and tranquil ownership. To add a little to mhoran_psprep's answer, the clause in question is not binding in perpetuity but only for the duration of the construction loan.  I assume that you are getting the loan from a bank rather than through  the builder.  The way a construction loan works is that the bank  agrees to loan you a certain amount of money for you to pay the builder but you don't get the money upfront to hold  till the construction is complete, or to pay to the builder each month. Each month, or whenever a major phase of the construction is completed, the builder submits a request for payment of (say) $X to you stating what part of the  whole work has been completed and attaching lien waivers from all the subcontractors that did any part of the work that they have been paid in full.  It is up to you to verify  (for your own protection) that the work has in fact been completed and that the work is satisfactory.  If everything looks OK, you send the  request (together with the lien waivers) to the bank which sends its own home inspector to verify that the work has in fact been completed. After the inspector's OK, the bank pays the builder $X  (more commonly $0.95X or $0.9X) and gets a lien waiver from the builder in the amount of the payment.  At this point, the amount that you  owe the bank increases by the amount paid. This goes on till the  house is completed, the municipality or county issues a Certificate  of Occupancy (meaning that that august body is satisfied that  there are no building code violations etc. and the place is  habitable) and the penultimate request for payment is made. Penultimate because a good construction contract withholds  some amount (5% or 10%) of the money owed to the builder  for anywhere from three  months to a year to ensure that the builder will come back  and fix things that were done incorrectly but not noticed  till the house was lived in. (For example, one drywall nail had penetrated an electrical wire creating leakage. This was not discovered during inspection - flip the switch; light turns on? yes, so flip the switch back and move on - but when the light was turned on for three hours after the house was occupied, an electrical fire began inside the wall!)  So, after this settle-down period is over, the builder submits the final payment request and gives a final lien waiver to the effect that everything owed to him has been paid. It is during this period of time that the bank wants to make sure that you don't take on additional loans or debts, or make any material changes to the facts that the bank used in assessing your credit-worthiness and making the decision to loan you the money. Hence the clause that is causing you to worry.  Construction loans usually are at higher interest rates than regular mortgages so that once construction is complete, it is in your best interest to replace the construction loan (paying off its mortgage) with a regular home-owner loan and mortgage.  If you get the regular mortgage from the same bank, you might be able to get some of the fees waived while going to another bank will mean that appraisal fee, termite inspection fee, etc will have to be paid. But in either case, the prohibition against buying that Beemer will disappear; just don't take out that auto loan between the mortgage application and the closing on the regular mortgage as mhoran_psprep's buyer did! "Generally, banks will not lend to ""rental"" LLC's, you'll have to cosign the loan personally. So for that matter LLC has no benefit. Paul mentioned the ""due on sale"" clause that is present in most current mortgage contracts and may trigger a call on your mortgage. Talk to your bank about it, in some cases you may be able to convince them that the ownership didn't in fact changed (since the same people are full owners of the LLC), but they may not buy it. If your bank allows it, you can transfer it into LLC and still enjoy the limited liability as an owner, but if not - you can get liability protection via insurance policy. In some cases that may even be cheaper. Talk to your insurance agent. In any case, deciding which (if at all) entity to use is a legal issue. You should talk to an attorney licensed in your State. There may be some tax considerations also, so talk to your tax adviser. In many cases, married couple jointly owning real-estate can skip the general partnership tax returns, but not with LLC." Looks like this settlement is broken down in cash and assistance to homeowners. This usually means BOA can count delinquent mtg debt on homes that are underwater as part of the settlement. Debt they normally would have written off anyway.  Nice thought that they are going after an individual of the firm "Getting a specific service recommendation is off-topic, but the question of what type of professional you need seems on-topic to me.  You may be looking for more than one professional in this case, but you could try these to start your search: Different people do things differently, but I think it would be pretty common to have a relationship (i.e. contract, retainer agreement, at least have met the person in case you have an ""emergency"") with a business law attorney and either a CPA or tax attorney.  You may try not to use them too much to keep costs down, but you don't want to be searching for one after you have an issue. You want to know who you're going to call and may establish at least a basis working relationship." Somebody will have to file all the required paperwork and fees with the local government, state government and even the federal government. This paperwork is used by these governments to record who owns the property and how it is owned.  Prior to the settlement date they also will need to verify how the property is described and owned so that you are sure that you are being sold the exact property you expect, and that it is delivered to you free and clear of all other debts. If this is done wrong you might discover years later that you paid money for something that you don't really own. In some jurisdictions this has to be done via a law office, in others there is no requirement for a lawyer. Because a mortgage company, bank, or credit union is giving you money for the loan, they may require you to use a settlement attorney. They don't want to discover in 5 years that a simple mistake will cost them hundreds of thousands to fix. The mortgage company is required to give you a more detailed estimate of all the closing costs before you are committed to the loan. The quoted paragraph is not good enough. Even if you can avoid the use of a lawyer these functions still need to be done by somebody, and that will still cost money. "The problem here can be boiled down to that fact you are attempting to obtain a loan without collateral.  There are times it can be done, but you have to have a really good relationship with a banker.  Your question suggests that avenue has been exhausted. You are looking for an investor, but you are offering something very speculative.  Suppose an investor gives you 20K, what recourse does he have if you do not pay the terms of the loan?  From what income will this be paid from?  What event will trigger the capability to make a balloon payment?    Now if you can find a really handy guy that really needs a place to live could you swap rent for repairs?  Maybe.  Perhaps you buy the materials, and he does the roof in exchange for 6 months worth of rent or whatever. If you approached me with this ""investment"", the thing that would raise a red flag is why don't you have 20K to do this yourself?  If you don't how will you be able to make payments?  For example of the items you mentioned: That is a weekend worth of work and some pretty inexpensive materials.  Why does money need to be borrowed for this? A weekend worth of demo, and $500 worth of material and another weekend to build something serviceable for a rental.  Why does money need to be borrowed for this? 2K?  Why does money need to be borrowed for this? This can be expensive, but most roofing companies offer financing.  Also doing some of the work yourself can save a ton of money.  Demoing an old roof is typically about 1/3 of the roofing cost and is technically simple, but physically difficult. So besides the new roof, you could have a lot of your list solved for less than 3K and three weekends worth of work.  You are attempting to change this into a rental, not the Taj Mahal."