Buying vs. Rent to Own Homes

The difference between buying a home and signing up for a lease-option depends on your timeframe and how much money you spend on buying the house.

When you buy a house outright, you pay for the fair market value of the home plus interest and other fees charged by your financial lender, if you have one. You buy the property today and immediately start building equity in it.

However, when you rent to own, you won’t own the home until you close on the property, which could be as far as three years from today. You’ll also pay rent monthly, and you don’t get that money back.

There are some fees that you pay for rent to own that you’ll get back as a credit towards the price of your home, like option fees and rent credits. These count as equity on the home, but they’re not on the scale of equity you would build with a mortgage. Therefore, these don’t add anything on to the price you pay for the home the way that rent does.

Rent to Own Realtors

Using a realtor for your rent to own deal can offer great benefits. Agents are well versed in real estate so they can effectively communicate opportunities and discern which of those opportunities is a legitimately good deal.

Nonetheless, not a lot of realtors will want to help with your rent to own deal because upfront profit for a realtor is minimal and the big payout down the line is not a guarantee.

That means you’ll have to do a little research to ensure that you make the best decisions, but you will save money on commission.

About Our Listings

Whether you’re interested in purchasing a condo or a townhouse, or if you’ve been touring apartments and houses, rent to own can be a good option for buyers – often with no credit check.

Just because the seller isn’t checking your credit score doesn’t mean you shouldn’t worry about it. You’ll need to have a credit score high enough to qualify for financing if you want to succeed in a rent to buy deal.

In rent to own by owner programs, sellers want to make a profit off of their properties. They will earn rent money from you whether you successfully buy the house or not. So, they don’t really worry about whether you have the credit score to buy it at the end of the lease.

Lease to purchase deals from a company are often less successful than from an owner because companies tend to snatch up cheap foreclosed homes and lease-option them on an “as is” basis.

Owners who are eager to sell their property may ask you to sign a lease-purchase agreement, which is very different from a lease-option because instead of having the option to buy the property before the end of the lease, you legally have to buy it. That can be difficult if you start the deal with bad credit and cannot bring it up high enough to qualify for a mortgage.

Looking for rent to own listings near me? Start your search on the Rent to Own Labs database.