People often call our office looking for a lease-purchase. The thing is, we don't do those in Texas much. Which is usually fine with them once they learn more about it, so I thought I would blog on it.
A TRUE lease-purchase is one in which the tenant-buyer is under contract to purchase the home at the end of the lease. The lease rate is $2-300 over market rates, and the landlord-seller is supposed to be depositing that additional money monthly into an escrow account, to be used by the tenant-buyer for part of their down payment at the sale. Are you starting to see where this can go wrong? The seller just takes the additional money and doesn't properly escrow it for use by the buyer. Additionally, the tenant-buyer needs other protection--what if something happens to the seller during the lease?
Because of these problems, and because residential real estate law in Texas is derived from consumer law which would protect the tenant or buyer more than the landlord or seller, Texas has come down on the side of eliminating lease purchases from real estate agent transactions. WE HAVE NO FORM FOR IT. If you did have the perfect situation, and everyone was in perfect agreement and absolutely trustworthy, a real estate agent could help by completing a one-year lease and a purchase contract with a one-year closing date, but an attorney would be required to provide a document that would tie the two together, outlining the moneys to be escrowed, the escrow process and agent, etc.
Usually, potential tenant-buyers really just don't want to move twice, and who can blame them? But when a knowledgable agent can explain what is really involved, they are happy to just lease something for a year and then come into the market for purchase at that time. Much better.
The hot button here in Round Rock today is the new school district boundaries. Lots of folks are upset that they bought a house so that their kids could go to a specific school, and now they have to move or go to a different school. Well, for one thing, nothing is done yet and there are 3 different possible boundary plans. But Alan McGraw, the mayor of Round Rock, pointed out that if you live in a town where things are happening, there is growth, there are jobs, people want to live there, then this is an inevitable occurrence. If you live in Podunk, and you have one elementary and one middle school and one high school, you don't have to worry about school boundaries changing, but you probably have to worry about other opportunities that you don't have but would enjoy in a more populated town, specifically a town where good enough things are happening that others want to move there. Nuff said.
Broker, ABR, CRS, GRI, EcoBroker, CREI, TAHS Realtor of the Year 2008 Director, Williamson County Association of Realtors Texas Association of Realtors Master Faculty
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