Can anyone point me in the right direction here? I want to convert as many rentals to “rent to own” contracts. Is there such a thing as having a rent to own contract where the tenant is responsible for 100% of the repairs. In other words, the home is “as is” and tenant assumes full responsibility for repairs.
You can write your contract anyway you want. We write them so that ‘major’ repairs are on us, and ‘minor’ repairs are on the tenants. Anything over $300 - $500 is ‘major’ and is on us. That said, if the tenant is damaging the home, we’ll bill it back to them and increase or extend their payments. We pay the insurance, so if anything really terrible happens (fire, flood, locusts), we simply file an insurance claim. But we’d only do that for a major ‘act of God’ type damage to a mobile home. You don’t want to file for tenant damage or you’ll look like a bad operator to the insurance company and your rates will skyrocket. Don’t get in a situation where a tenant is responsible for ‘everything’ and something ‘major’ happens, like a roof leak, and they can’t afford to repair it, and next thing you know, the $350 roof leak does $2,500 in damage to the walls and floors, and the tenants disappear in the middle of the night, of course cursing you for being a ‘lousy landlord.’ You want to know about ‘major’ problems so they don’t become ‘really major’ problems.The definition of ‘major’ and ‘minor’ will vary with geography and income and responsibility level of your residents, but $300 - $500 is probably a good range.Good luck,-jl-