I have few rental homes. They are all occupied.
One of them I would like to sell to a friend of mine who wants to get into rental and get some money out for some other deals.
The home is currently leased for two years. The lease does not end until August 2010. Is there a way to transfer this lease to my friend? Any permission I need to take from the tenants? My lease does not state that I can assign to anyone. I am in Texas.
Please help.
Thanks,
DFW
You do not need a special form or permission from the tenants. If your friend buys this house, he is legally bound to honor the terms of the existing lease until it expires unless you and the tenant mutually decide to terminate the current lease agreement.
This is one of the pitfalls when buying a rental with tenants in place. You ALWAYS want to make sure you review the existing lease so you know what you’re getting into. What if the current owner just signed a one year lease with the current tenant at 1/2 of current market rent? That would mean you would be stuck with someone paying 1/2 of what they should be paying.
So, when we sign the purchase contract for this home… we should put some verbage like… “Buyer to honor the lease agreement in pace between DFW and Jone Doe dated 1/1/08 in whole without any changes…”
any suggesion on drafting… when should I or my new buyer should notify the tenats that no rent need to go to new owner of the home…?
DFW
I just pulled out our contract from our last purchase of properties w/ tenants in place. Under the section for “Special Provisions” it says:
Current rent payment ot be pro-rated and Security deposit to be turned over to Buyers. Lease agreement to be asigned to buyer and subject to buyer review.
This makes it easier on your tenant as well because they will simply pay the next months rent to the new owner (your friend). You will credit him at closing the security deposit and the pro-rated rent for the portion of the month he will be the owner. We as buyers always draft a letter to the tenant stating as of date XX/XX/XXXX, the management of the property has officially changed hands. Then we write about how all current terms of their lease remain the same, but the name and address to send rent payments is now…
If there is no written lease (we’ve been running into numerous “verbal” leases lately), we take over a new lease when we meet the tenants. That way we can impose our late fee structure and any specific rules we choose.
When the house is placed under contract by us, we like to let the tenants know we would like to keep the rent the same (initially) and we’d like them to stay there. Some people get worried when their rented place goes up for sale because their worried the new person will jack their rent up right away or want them out so the buyer can occupy. The buyer can’t occupy until the end of the current lease term. If it happens to be month-to-month, then you just have to give them notice of lease termination as per your state’s LL/tenant laws.