Verbal Agreement on Owner Finance House

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rednekprinces24

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My husband and I moved into a house that was left to my husbands best friend at the time and his sister. The father that lived there had died and they inherited it. The agreement was just verbal but we were going to buy the house. Our payments were to go towards the purchase of the house. There wasn't an agreement on how much we were to pay in the begining or how long we would pay in the begining. I do realize how stupid this was now but we were desprate at the time and he wanted to house to be taken care of. When we moved in the septic was messed up...the stove didn't work. Do to these factors they agreed that we would work on the house a little and then start paying. At this time there was still no agreement on how much or when we would start paying. We lived in the house from March until September. We hadn't wanted to pay until we had something in writing at this point we realized we should just agree on something and begin paying we had lived in the house at this point for 6 months. We then agreed on $75 a week. We sent $75 a week to my husbands best friend and then the next week we sent $75 to his sister. The air conditioner in the house quit working, the heater, the septic and so on. We purchased window units and small heaters. Worked on the septic. It is however in need of more work. We have also paid the taxes on the house since we have lived here. We agreed in the begining that in 5 years or when we had the house half paid for we would try to get a loan on our own. The total purchase agreement was supposed to be $40,000. Then at some point my husbands friend got mad and said he was going to start charging us interest. I must add that during this whole time when we moved into the house and to this day they still have items that are THEIRS in the house. We had to take stuff to the dump from the garage that was theirs that was rat infested that the told us to just get rid of....this cost us money to get rid of thier stuff and their stuff is still taking up space in our house. Ok back to my story...he advised us he was goin to start charging interst at 1% we never actually agreed to pay 1% we just kinda were like whatever lets just get a contract. We still dont have a written contract. We have sent post dated checks for the past 2 years so they would have at least a months worth of checks in thier hands at the begining of each month. Due to the fact that checks would get misplaced on their part and ours or they would not get to them on time. We fixed the problem by sending them all at one time for the month or sometimes even 2 months in advance. I always wrote in the memo section of the check House Pmt. About a year ago at least the sister wrote me and told me she had been bad at keeping record and wanted to know how much we had paid and what the agreement was. I figured out by going back and counting the weeks.... since we paid $75 a week not so much a month. I sent her the amount and also included what I thought the original agreement to have been. She had also asked what the agreement was. I asked at a later date if they would be willing to extend the date that we had to have a loan by since they had left stuff in our house the whole time and we have fallen on hard times ourselves. I got no response. Today my husbands friend called and said he is having a contract drawn up that we will have a loan on the house by the end of October and if we don't we will have 60 days to move out. That would be like paying $20000 and the taxes on the place and fixing all of the things we have fixed just to move out??? Do we have any rights? I mean we more than anything want a loan on the house and to be done with dealing with them. This has ruined our friendship and we have both been wrong by not doing things we should have in the begning. But they didn't move their stuff out ever.... and we have had to pay to do most of this for them. We have taken care of the house paid the taxes. Do we have to sign the contract he has drawn up now?? Can he just kick us out and we lose everything we have put into the house and this is just the price we have to pay for being stupid? I have 3 children who live in the house I don't want to be out on the street. Part of our hard times we have fallen upon are due to my youngest child being quite sick throughout his life. Thanks for any help you can give me on this. I do have pictures of the work we have done on the septic. I do have reciepts for paying the taxes that I paid by check also. I can get copies of the canceled checks with House Pmt in the memo section and the Bal Pd in the memo section of the check.
 
You do realize that this casual set up regarding payments, fixing things, etc. has now led to one big disaster, don't you? How could someone work towards buying a house with absolutely nothing on writing regarding this?

At this point with nothing in writing, it is very unlikely you would be considered to be "rent to own" tenants. At the most, a court would consider you to have a "tenancy at will" or be month to month renters. Depending on the state that you live in, such tenancies can typically be terminated with 30 days written notice (in my state of Georgia this requires a 60 day notice from the landlord). That's it; you would have no other recourse except to move out (or go through the eviction process if you refused to do this).

At any rate, your best bet IS to get a mortgage/loan for the place and just buy it outright from the owners.

Gail
 
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