Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Illinois

I have worked with two different Habitat for Humanity affiliates and understand the general Habitat program. It can vary some from affiliate to affiliate, but my impression is that there may be a misunderstanding concerning your mother's situation. There should not be any significant impediment to your mother selling her home.

There should be a mortgage on the property for the loan. Dealing with that upon a sale of the property should not be much different from the way you or I would deal with it if we were selling our homes. We would ask the lender for a payoff letter and at closing the remaining balance would be paid.

In your mother's case, the lender is probably the Habitat for Humanity affiliate. There may be a couple differences, however, from a typical mortgage loan. First, the affiliate may have a right of first refusal, meaning the affiliate must be offered the opportunity to buy the property or match any other offer. Second, there may be a variation in calculating the payoff to protect against Habitat homeowners profiting from a property for a certain number of years. In other words, an affiliate may sell a $75,000 house for $50,000 because that is the cost to build it. It would not be a fair use of the charitable transaction for the homeowner to immediately have that profit built in. So, there is often a term during which the homeowner must remain to start gaining the added equity in the property.

In any event, the simple answer is that your mother should be able to sell. It would be more a question of how the payoff is calculated, not that she cannot sell. She should contact the affiliate and walk through the process.