If a landlord rented a house to me w/a 2 yr. lease then it went into forclosure do I pay rent to him.

Question

We have a two yr. lease and 4 months into it, the landlord defaulted on his payments. If my husband and I can't obtain financing to buy it is going to be sold at auction. Do I pay rent to landlord in the interim.

Answer 1

You should talk to him to see how far it is into default.  A month or two?  I would tell him you would be willing to pay rent directly to the mortgage or at least the amount that is owed to the mortgage every month, thats only fair.  This happens a lot by the way, a whole lot.  If you like the home you should do the above.  If you want to move stop paying, save your money and find somewhere else to rent.  If you stop paying you may have some legal consequences if the landlord chooses to pursue them which is HIGHLY unlikely if its really about to be foreclosed on and HIGHLY unlikely a judge would side with him if he did choose to pursue you.  (THESE ARE MY OPINIONS AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSTRUED AS LEGAL ADVICE OR OTHERWISE)

Answer 2

Legally, he owns the house until title passes to the mortgage holder.  You should continue to pay rent to him until you are otherwise notified.

Answer 3

If the bank owns the home, contact them immediately to find out where to start making the payments, but before you pay them, get a copy of the current title to the property to make sure that they do indeed own the home.

Somtimes banks will want to keep the tenants at the property to have an ongoing income, but if you give them too much of a fuss, the can easily get you out of the house.  They wont need to go through the whole eviction process like you would think of, (depending on the laws of the state that you live in) they can have a sheriff serve you with a 3 day eviction notice, and you have no legal recourse.  Any and all agreements that you have with the prior landlord are now null and void, as well as any deposits.  

The company that I work for rents out propertys for employee lodging when we go out of town for extended periods of time and we have had this happen.  We had a $2300 deposit on the property, and no-one could show us any current proof of title, so after consulting with our attournies, we just decided to stay out our deposit amount.  We knew the landlord wouldn't go through the eviction process because if he wasn't paying for his house, why would he go throught the eviction process and pay for that?

In the end the bank sold the property to someone else, and now they are raising rents, requiring another deposit be put on the property, and a lease of 2 years...and they can.

It sucks what you're going through, and it's more of a headache than you will ever need.  I wouldn't recommend sticking out the deposit (if you have one) unless you had a back-up plan because at any time the bank can come and kick you out, just like that.

Good luck, hope everything works out for you.

Answer 4

ask a real estate attorney.

Answer 5

His mortgage says that , if he can't make the payment, he is supposed to at least send your rent payment to the bank.  He isn't doing that.  You can call the bank and see if they want that.  They might even pay you money to protect the house from vandalism.  You will not be able to buy it at auction.  At auction, you must pay cash.  No loans.  The next day after the auction, you can make them an offer with you getting a loan. /