Buying a house from landlord- "rent to own" house? BE CAREFULL!!!

[old mark]

We bought our house through one of these schemes - we put some money down and had a contract stating the details of the deal whereby we were buying the house directly from the owner via monthly payments...BUT we had a lawyer look it over and he found that there were loopholes that the landlord could use to back out of the deal and take every cent we had in the house. Our neighbor just cam eout of a similar deal with his old landlord and lost thousands of dollars downpayment and years of payments...his landlord "decided" that he wanted more money for the house after having a contract for years...

Fortunately our lawyer found a loophole for us, and we got a mortgage on our own and paid off our old landlord in cash. He didn't want to do it, and tried to back out, but we told him he had to comply with his contract or we would sue him and win the house anyway.

He had done this at least 5 or 6 times in the past - and taken several families for all their savings, leaving them with nothing.

If you see a good house with this kind of a deal attatched, GET A LAWYER to check everything involved, and if the landlord/owner balks, walk away fast - there are other houses out there - don't lose your savings to a crooked landlord.

mark

[Donnachaidh]

1. we walked away from a fsbo house after they wanted to pull a stunt on us

The house was behind their property, and in order for the house to be sold legally, he would have had to include half of his circular driveway in the property. He wanted to put the sale through, and then have us sign his driveway back to him, off the books.

The house was built with inadequate entrance widths. I told him that was illegal, and wanted a lawyer to look over his *plan*. He was trying to cheat us, of course.

[raccoon]

2. Thanks for the heads up. Glad you got out of that. nt