Earlier this year my husband and I were married. shortly after, an apartment building came up for sale or rent to own. My husband is german and we are in the process of his paperwork so he has no social security number. I am only 23 and was unable to obtain a loan large enough due to not having enough credit history. We decided to do the rent to own until we were able to finance the property. (Money isn’t the issue. I own another small, yet thriving business. My husband worked as a computer programmer in Germany and has a nice savings).
Now in a rent to own agreement what is the landlord allowed to do?
The agreement we have simply says how much well pay by the 7th of each month or there will be a fee it goes on to say that we may pay it off early with no penalty. It states the interest rate, price, and term. A couple weeks ago the landlord came angry because we didn’t pay the taxes. We informed him we did thought he would pay them (just like when you finance throw a bank-its included in the payment) and he had never told us anything about it nor had he given us a bill. He said if we did not pay the taxes by the 31st he would take the building back. We paid it however it left us short for our payment. We asked him if it would be ok if we pay the difference two weeks after the due date and we’d pay the late fee. (Due to the cost of the taxes we cashed in an investment however we didn’t receive the money by the 31st. It is to be here in a week, we asked for 2 wks so to guarantee we would have the check). He began screaming about how we aren’t paying the bills. (which we are I have all the receipts) he went on to say how i had my x-mas lights 24 hrs a day wasting electric and how we allow the upstairs apartment to have a window open (the one room becomes very large, we lived in that apartment a few wks and it does truly get extremely warm in that one room, to turn down the heat makes it too cold in the other rooms) I informed him that it is not his business. these are our bills and as long as their paid then what does it matter. He then basically called us pigs and asked if we knew how to clean. I had stones on my porch (it is next to the main road and is very difficult to keep clean) that he saw my porch and would hate to see the inside of my house! I am very insulted. He also is angry about any thing we want to do. He does not want us to bring in a landscaper. He says the building is fine, which it is not. He did not even have fire alarms in the apartments. He was angry and screaming at us in Walmart one day because we purchased fire alarms for all the units. There were two dead trees in the yard (one leaning into the building) we had cut down he said we were wasting money. He is constantly threatening to take this place back. Is he allowed to do that? We are within the contract. Our payment is always made on time. with the exception of this one but is still OK according to the agreement as long as its received by the first of the next month. We have an appointment to see our lawyer but I would just like to get some opinions for my peace of mind.
I thought a rent to own deal would be just like buying through a bank. They don’t care if you tear the place down as long as they get their money.
(as a side note we did make a large down payment. the banks i talked to said that they like ppl to have a longer history I only have some credit cards a cell a car and some student loans even though its all in good standing they say it wasnt enough we attributed it to the credit crunch)

Technorati Tags: apartment building, computer programmer, couple weeks, credit history, due date, germany, interest rate, landlord, money, paperwork, receipts, rent to own agreement, social security, social security number, thriving business, upstairs apartment, wks