The never ending financial crisis and current multitude of investment opportunities is causing many to look at fresh and new approaches to the traditional Real Estate methods of buying, selling, and investing in real estate..

What is Lease to Own?

Buyers are finding it increasingly more difficult to get bank approved financing, sellers are losing money on sales just to stay above water, and investors are losing money on their real estate business opportunities.

Even agents and brokers are feeling the impact. A recent study showed that as many as 3 million listed homes in the USA and 200 thousand in Canada did not sell last year.

Through all the market turmoil, one niche strategy has seen a dramatic increase in attention by solving many of the challenges posed by the current economic and social environment.

Sellers are receiving their asking price while their mortgage, taxes and insurance are paid in full. Their properties are well maintained by buyers who are interested in increasing the value of the property.

Buyers are living in houses while they evaluate the property and shop for the best financing and terms. No longer simply renting, now renting with credit automatically reducing the purchase price before they even buy it!

Investors are increasing the cash flow potential of all their real estate investments, and Real Estate agents are finding alternative solutions for common problems buyers and sellers face that are limiting their success.

What is Lease to Own?

It is sometimes called rent to own, lease purchase, lease option, the sandwich lease, or rent to buy. We will use these terms interchangeably throughout the site. The technique is in the same real estate category as vendor financing and in some strategies, property management.

Using this real estate strategy, buyers can enter into a lease agreement on a house for a set period of time. An additional option to purchase contract gives the tenant the option to purchase the house before the end of the lease agreement at a predetermined price.

For buyers right now it can be extremely challenging to get bank approval for a home loan. Using this technique, buyers get to live in the house first, experience the neighborhood, and so on. Meanwhile, if credit is an issue, the buyer can spend the term of the option consideration seeking out the best mortgage rates and correct any credit report problems.

Rent to Own is NOT limited to those with credit challenges!!

Banks are offering fantastic interest rates, but require 10-25% down, with excellent credit. The desired effect of making homes more accessible for first time buyers or those with lesser incomes by lowering interest rate, has been offset by the "recovery" of sales prices, which of course results in higher mortgage payments.

This is a great time for high income earners who have an extra $50k to make a business investment, but what about the middle and lower incomes? These are not people with credit problems. These are every day people who want to better themselves, can afford the mortgage payments, yet somehow are not qualified by the banking system.

What about the self employed entrepreneur and sole-proprietor? In exchange for pursuing the "American Dream", they are greeted with scepticism and hoops by the traditional financial institutions. These potential buyers are often asked for 25-30% down and a reduction of qualifying income.

The good news is that with lease to own, you can defer bank financing for up to 5 years!!!

You may avoid bank financing entirely if the seller will also vendor finance after a successful lease agreement with you. This real estate strategy is the answer that many sellers and buyers are looking for to tackle the 2010 real estate market.

It means that the dream of home ownership is closer for these buyers by using the lease purchase real estate strategy.

Does the rent to own strategy benefit sellers as well?

Right now, anyone selling a house will appreciate just how challenging it can be. With a lack of bank approved buyers in the market, prices have fallen drastically. Many sellers have tried selling their properties as "for sale by owner" after giving up on their Realtors. For the successful FSBO, saving the 5-6% real estate broker fee is typically the goal. The challenge of finding a qualified buyer still remains, therefore no problems are solved. More importantly, the FSBO seller becomes increasingly frustrated due to the lack of tools and market exposure. If a real estate agentcannot sell a house with their specifically enhanced tools created for brokers, how well can a FSBO compete?

Even in times where the real estate market is strong, we find times when sellers carry two mortgages. The are many reasons this can occur, however the point being that we can all imagine the stress this puts on a family. The first option is waiting out the market and hope that someone will purchase the property at your desired asking price. Meanwhile, you cover the payments, taxes and property insurance on two properties. This often results in missed payments and other undue stress resulting is credit blemishes that can haunt the seller for years.

The second option is using lease to own contracts to generate income from their properties as they find buyers who are willing to lease their house from them. By choosing rent to own, the seller increases their buyers market as much as 25% by including the renting population. More importantly, instead of your house sitting empty for months on end you can generate rental income now and turn the property into a positive cash flow investment.

Even better is that you have an extremely high chance of the person leasing the property exercising their option to buy before the end of the lease agreement. The good news for sellers is that as long as you have negotiated a fair price at the start of the agreement you can be fairly certain that they will go ahead and purchase the property.

So the lease purchase creative real estate investing strategy can be extremely effective for both buyers and sellers?

It is definitely worth considering as a sound real estate investing strategy or business venture as well.

If you are an investor then you will also want to find all the information on how to lease purchase for more successful real estate investing. Investors can secure good rental returns from tenants and have a ready made buyer for the property at the end of the lease period. This is a key real estate investing strategy being used right now in turning real estate investments from negative to positive cash flow properties.

Whether you own rental properties and are tired of the associated management hassles, or you want to increase the cash flow potential from your flips, or you arein the process of liquidating purchased homes for equity, renting to own is a viable option.

Traditional marketing methods for real estate are no longer as effective. By controlling property the smart investor will increase the volume of deal perform, capitalizing on the positive cash flow and create a lucrative investment business.