[azholiday]

So we entered into a 2 year lease (this was a renewed lease after having lived here for nearly a year) with our landlord here in Santa Clara County, California.

This was in October of 06, so our lease is through October 2008, which is about 16 months from now.

She recently (about 2 months ago) told us she's trying to sell the place and tried to sell it herself. She asked if we were interested in buying it ourselves and we explained "no" and then she said she'd either agree to dissolve the lease or continue out our agreement but try to sell it to someone who would understand that they were getting tenants out of it. So we were fine with the situation at that time and told her we'd like to stay.

Then the subject of "buying us out of our lease" came up and no specific terms were mentioned, but we were open to this option, provided that our needs were met.

I am due to have my second child in 2 weeks, and we have a 2 year old as well. Our landlord just received an offer on the townhome yesterday. She's asked now that we give her a list of requests that we might have so that she might present them to the buyers in order to be able to buy the home and move in (as opposed to having us there).

I've talked to a lawyer and am now reassured that we cannot be forced from our home if we decide not to leave, but I would like to hear anyones' experience on this.. if you have been "bought out" on a contract or whatever. The remainder of the contract would be 16 months at $2000 a month.

If we move, to get a comparable neighborhood and size home, etc.. we will most likely have to pay more. Not to mention moving expenses and having my husband take time off work. Plus just in general that this has been a very stressful period, being in the last two months of my pregnancy having to keep my home clean and vacate whenever someone wanted to see it, etc. (though they were usually good about making appts the day before). But now, this is going to come to a head right when we're waiting to have this baby anyday now. Even though this offer has been made, we're going to be in limbo for the duration of the agreements and if this buyer does not agree to "buy" us out, I'm not sure that our landlord will.

So we're asking for about $10,000.. (we've itemized out all the expenses, etc). We don't want to be greedy and be jerks about it..

Does anyone think this is just ridiculous and that we're asking too much? We feel like this is the amount that would help to make this a less inconvenient situation and would make us feel like we hadn't been screwed. We like living here and don't really want to move.. especially right now, when we'd have a newborn and a toddler. The whole reason we extended our lease in October was because we knew we'd be having a baby and that our financial situation in Oct. 2008 would be such that we'd either be ready to buy our own place or at least rent something that really fit our needs much better and now we're faced with either having to move a full 16 months earlier than planned OR being jerks and saying "sorry, we're not leaving"


So any experiences on this? Thanks in advance...

[excon]

OR are we being jerks and saying "sorry, we're not leaving"

Hello az:

Nahhh, you're not being jerks. You are, however, expensive. That's a compliment. At least you got the negotiations going, and I think it's a great place to start. Hopefully they'll come back with something like $5,000 and you wind up settleing for $7,500. I don't know. Sounds OK to me.

excon

[froggy7]

First, how is the market in Santa Clara right now? The buyer isn't going to buy you out... it's going to come out of the seller's profits. So, to me the question is whether the seller is just getting enough to pay off the mortgage, in which case he's not going to pay you 10K, or if he is going to make multi 100s of thousands in profit on the sale, in which case 10K is just a drop in the bucket.

But you are in the driver's seat in this situation. If they don't buy you out, the buyer is going to be stuck with your lease for the next 16 months. That may not bother some people, if they are looking for investment property, but it means that you will be dealing with a new, possibly more difficult, landlord for that time.

[ScottGem]

As you have found out, a buyer has to honor existing leases so you can't be thrown out. Of course, this could be a deal breaker for the seller if you can't be bought out.

I'm curious as to why you didn't want to buy it yourself. You might have gotten a sweetheart deal. But anyway, I think a reasonable buyout would be 2 months rent plus moving expenses (which could include lost wages, expenses for home hunting as well as the actual moving costs).

[Fr_Chuck]

Yes the 10,000 is not out of a good range. But normally the current landlord will be the one to buy you out, not the buyer, the buyer would make it part of their offer that you be out at the time of closing or they won't buy.

And as you know they can not force your out. They have to allow you to live there for the end of the lease. Of course if you mess up their sell, you can be sure at the end of the lease they will ask you to leave and you won't get a penny to move.

But yes, I would get a rough estimate from a moving company to pack and move your belongings, get a estimate of current equal rents in your area. Plus all money you may have to pay more per month on your new rental, lost wages, plus just a little for your trouble.

A lot can depend on the value for the property, and how bad they want to sell.

[azholiday]

Thanks everyone! This helps a lot!

For this situation, 10k for us is just about 2 months rent, plus moving exp. And a weeks worth of pay for my husband, who would have to take off work (and we're using all his vaca time for the baby I'm having in the next two weeks and I would NOT want to use vacation time for this situation anyway). Plus $200 difference for the rent for 16 months (and actually that comes to closer to $11k when it's all added together but like I said.. we are trying to make it fair).

We also know that we may have to pay more deposits in places, etc. for utilities and things that are being covered here.

We moved here from Phx and the real estate market there is quite different.. read: less expensive. We always owned our homes there, but when we moved the rental market was just not there since it is still so cheap to own so we sold out when we moved here for work. We're still not quite over our sticker shock and know that our rent is nowhere NEAR what the mortgage on this place would be. We like it, don't get me wrong.. and if we thought we could afford the mortgage without putting ourselves on macandcheese and ramen soup..

We would be in a MUCH more suitable position to buy at the end of our lease, in 2008 (for many reasons involving income and $$). There are other reasons as well, for example while we love this home.. there is no yard and I would like a yard for my kids.

The home is listed at $610k, but she claims she's losing money on the deal. She's made a big deal of mentioning this several times in the last couple weeks so I don't know if she's just trying to draw my sympathy on it or if she's telling the truth. And if she doesn't choose to buy us out (I think the min. we would accept is about $9k because like I said before, I feel that our reasons for reason that number are very valid) we have no issues saying we'll stay (again, not to be jerks, but I think any less than $9k and it wouldn't be really worth it for us to move).

Thanks again everyone!

Thanks again for the input, I really appreciate it.

[azholiday]

Actually I should have mentioned that we're actually asking for a little more than 10 because we know that we'll get a counter offer.. that will hopefully be 9k or more, that we can comfortably accept.

Thanks again!

[excon]

Hello again, az:

Your negotiations will have a better basis if you understand the parameters. You won't be successful if you make outlandish demands, and in my view, you are.

The idea behind them paying you to move is to make you whole, not to make you wealthy. Moving expenses are costs that you would have to endure sometime or other, so they shouldn't be provided to you for free now. Your husband is going to have to take time off work sometime to help you move, so he's not entitled to his lost wages.

Your actual loss might be some overlapping rent. That cost is minimal.

Now, as I indicated, I don't disagree with your demand for $10K. But don't get all righteous thinking that you're entitled to that much because that's how much you have to come up with out of your pocket.

The settlement should cover the minimal actual costs plus anything you can get for your inconvenience. If you can get $8K for your inconvenience, go for it. But, you'll come out ahead even taking an offer of $5K.

excon

[azholiday]

I don't think that I agree with that because at this point we're not prepared financially TO move. We WON'T come out ahead taking an offer of $5k because that's not something we were prepared to do NOW. You're right that my husband at sometime in the future WOULD have to take time off to move, but it would be when we had vacation time to use for that. He WON'T have that now because he's having to take that when our baby is born in 2 weeks. (It's just two weeks that he's taking which is pretty standard for taking off for a baby, and is all the vacation time he has this year).

So when we move, and he takes off time for work, we WON'T get paid for that.

So yes, in 16 months we would have paid all those moving expenses and he would have taken a week of vacation time for that, but that is 16 months in the future and it's after we would have planned for that for some time. Not when we would have very little time to save and plan for that. If we end up spending our own money for this in any way shape or form, I'm afraid we're going to have to say no. Maybe that is selfish, but we're not rich and this won't make us wealthy as you say. Where are you located? Because maybe you don't quite understand how expensive living here in the Bay area is. We are asking for his lost wages because we NEED that income. We are a single income family soon to have 2 children.

[azholiday]

Okay, so we decided that in reality, the stress of moving is not worth any amount of an offer. So we told her today that we were going to stay in our lease through the duration. Having a baby in the next month was going to be the big event and we didn't want to have to deal with an impending move as well.

She then MADE an offer which was :giving us our security deposit back (which, not to brag but this place is in just as good a shape now as it was when we moved in.. so we would have gotten at least the majority of it back anyway.. ) and to pay half our moving expenses and to babysit for us.. what? I barely know you woman.. you're not going to babysit my children. She doesn't even have kids! My toddler would run circles around her.

But we never gave her any indication that to us, this was a ridiculous offer or any indication of what we were GOING to ask for. We just let her know that the timing was terrible and we had extended our lease in the first place for a reason.

So of course she got petty and claimed that we'd better never want out of our lease and that this was going to make our relationship more of a business relationship (really? I hardly know you anyway.. I don't understand where she thought our relationship WASN'T a business relationship.. we didn't even know her before we answered her ad on Craigslist for her rental property)..

So anyway.. thanks again for all the advice! We really appreciate it. In the long run though, even the idea of getting our requests met wasn't enough to entice us to cause this stress in our lives so soon after having a second baby.

[ScottGem]

I understand, but there is another consideration here. Do you want a landlord that's upset with you? I would be very careful that you give her no excuses to make life harder on you. Your payments need to be made on time without even being a day late. You have to scrupulously adhere to the lease terms.

I'm not sayiong you did the wrong thing, I'm just making sure you understand the bed you made for yourselves.