Rent to Own

This is a long shot, and maybe someone will have some opinions, maybe not. Its a bit long, but could use some input either way.

DH and I currently rent our house. We love it here. It's a small ranch, but has SOO much potential. Each day we are talking about how it would be nice to expand...we think of differnt ideas each day. Of corse, we aren't going to act on it since we are renting LOL.

We moved in last year, signed a contract and all... effective April 1st to be exact. Now, since it's been over a year, we never signed a new contract. We are pretty close with our landlord...we don't actually eat dinner together or go out together or anything like that, but she's very understanding, and was super excited when we had our first baby back in Feb. She even sent us a congrats card.

Before DH and I moved in, there was no one living here. We found out from our neighbors that no one lived here for well over 2 years.... And we also found out the previous tenants were all horrible... Didnj't pay rent...didn't do anything to the house...you name it our poor landlord had to deal with.

DH and I did some small fixings to the house. Such as adding in a driveway. We didn't have one at all when we moved in...it was just grass...so we did it cheap... got some wood to box it out... and got some RC to fill it with for free. Then we did the basement... when we found out we were having a baby, DH needed a place to keep all his stuff, like the computers and such. So we tore down the rotted sheet rock in the basement, and made it nice with some wall panels, and tiles on the concrete. Feels like a real room now. Even fixed the ceiling.Again, we did it all cheap, under $100 for everything :) ... And now we are just painting...jsut to make it seem more like home. After that, we really won't have anythng left to do LOL.

Since no new contract was signed, we were thinking of asking the landlord if we could make this house a rent to own home. We will NOT have enough money for a good down payment while staying here, since we pay ALL utilites. Our friend lucked out once with a rent to own, that they rented for 2 years, and all the rent money was used as the down payment. Since this wasn't orignally set up as a rent to own, I don't think we can luck out that great.

Do you think such things really exist that we can keep paying her our rent, but then lests say a year or so down the road we can use that as a down payment, such as our firend did a while back? Do you think a typical friendly landlord would be interrested in that..? She even told us already that no one is ready to move in after us, and since it did take her 2 years to find us, she doesn't want to lose us. But hoenstly, if we have another child, we will need another bedroom, and renting here won't be an option anymore...we'll have to move, or expand, but we aren't expanding while renting LOL.

Opinons are great... or some sense of reality... LOL.

THANKS!

Re: Rent to Own

The way rent to own works is that you agree on a price up front, sign a contract and agree on a certain percentage of your rent that would go towards the downpayment...NOT that you pay rent and that it counts towards the downpayment, at least I've never heard of such a thing.

If you really like the house, go for it. The only thing is that you have to draw up a contract, involve a RE attorney and that costs money. Good luck!

Re: Rent to Own

The only thing she can say is yes or no. She isn't going to kick you out or anything. You're an ideal tenant.

I say go for it. What is there to lose? Even if she says no this month, maybe it will put a bug in her ear and make her change her mind next month.

Good luck!