My wife and I are building a house, and are getting ready to list our house on the market. We have only lived in this house a couple years and have not built "enough" equity. We already have a rental property that has went extremely well for us. This house is a little larger than I really want to manage as a rental, so we have been looking for alternatives. We have been bouncing around the idea of a "contract for deed" approach, but we are somewhat unfamiliar with the process, contracts, laws, etc. Can someone please point me in the right direction to obtain details regarding these types of contacts?

Think of a contract for deed as you being the bank and lending to someone with such poor credit that no one with any common sense would loan them money.

Ok, it does not really mean that every time all contracts are like that, I have bought properties on contract if I was buying a fix up home and wanted to merely pay a monthly payment.

But most of the contract for deed homes I sell are normally foreclosed on and that is how you make your real money on them, you get that 5 to 10 percent down, and when they don't pay, you foreclose and sell it again and again and again, My uncle was the master of this, I think he sold one house over 10 times ( before I bought it)

Now you may find a good buyer and it works fine, but then you may end up taking the hosue back and have to replace all of the rugs, have wholes in all of the walls, and someone store the air unit and all the copper pipes in the house.

If you are gong to do it, try and get a higher down payment as possible, and have the contract written by an attorney, pay that 300 to 500 dollars and get it down right.