Tuskegee University, formerly known as the Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers, was founded On July 4, 1881. The first teacher at this historic school was none other than Dr. Booker T Washington, who was a dominant and outspoken leader of the African American community in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The school was founded by Colonel W.F. Foster, who was running for re-election in the Alabama Senate in 1881 and approached former slave and African American community leader Lewis Adams to learn how to gain the African American vote. Adams asked for an educational institution for his people, and the school was born. Today, Tuskegee University stands as an independent hall of higher education that focuses on a strong liberal arts foundation for its students.
In 1923, the Tuskegee Home became the Tuskegee Veterans Administration Medical Center, which is a part of the larger National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers program. Its original purpose was to provide medical care for African American veterans who served during World War I, but continued to live in a segregated home. The Center also helped other African Americans in the community attain professional careers that were unavailable to them elsewhere.

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

Rent to own is beneficial to both buyers and sellers, but that’s not common knowledge. A lot of people look to realtors as a credible source of information for their counterpart in a rent to own deal about the benefits of the program.

However, you likely won’t find a realtor who is interested in helping you. There’s not a lot of profit for realtors in rent to own deals.

Instead, you’ll have to become a credible expert on the process yourself. Honestly, that’s not a bad thing. It’s better that you know everything you need to about the process you’re investing so much time and money into.

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.