So what is this about? Well its an amazing concept to buy your first property, put simply you start out renting the property as the tenant, then at a later date you exercise your right to buy the property. This has been going on in Australia and USA for some time and a whole industry has grown up based on this concept of “rent to own” or “rent to buy”.
The hardest part is finding a property available to purchase in this way. Ideally you need a vendor who does not need to take their equity out of their house right away, but equally they need to move quickly and don’t want to leave their property empty waiting to find a buyer. In other words, someone who wants to sell their house fast but are willing to wait for the equity.
The advantages to the tenant-buyer are clear, but there are also advantages for the vendor. For example the vendor can agree a price to sell in advance, they get a large rental deposit from the tenant, and they get a tenant who is going to look after the property as if it were their own – because in 2 years or so it will be their own property! If you want to know more about how this works try http://www.simple2buy.co.uk/forum/ where you will find some experts on this new (to UK) concept of Rent to Own / Buy. Update 20 July 2009 – you can now advertise for free the type of property you are looking to Rent then buy.
