My father in law will be retiring soon and he and my mother in law have been working on their house a bit in hopes of selling it soon... replacing the shower in the bathroom and repairing a leaky pipe between the first and second floor... redoing some of the flooring... that sort of thing... nothing really major like putting on an addition, but not exactly minor stuff either. As they've been doing this they've had the house on the market, but given the way the market is right now there just hasn't been much interest in the house.
My MIL was recently offered an interesting job that includes housing down here in FL (they live in NY) and they're considering taking it and moving down, but they would need to do something with the house. Since they can't seem to sell it they were thinking of trying to rent it to someone and they said ideally they would rent it to someone who could do some of the work on the house... either rent it cheaply in return for continuing to work on the house, or give them credit on the rent for each project they completed... maybe even do some sort of a rent to own agreement too.
While this sounds like an interesting idea it threw up a lot of red flags in my head... what if the renter does really terrible work or screws something up that might be behind a wall and not easy to see. Since they would be living in FL and the house is in NY it's not like they could inspect each project as it's completed. Or maybe even worse, what if the renter falls of a ladder while he's trying to fix the roof or something and hurts himself and sues them?
They said that they've known people who have been in similar arrangements and things have worked out well... so I'm asking you guys if you have ever done or heard of something like this? If so, do you have any ideas on what they could do or put into the contract to protect themselves from the risks?
Thanks,
Brett
My MIL was recently offered an interesting job that includes housing down here in FL (they live in NY) and they're considering taking it and moving down, but they would need to do something with the house. Since they can't seem to sell it they were thinking of trying to rent it to someone and they said ideally they would rent it to someone who could do some of the work on the house... either rent it cheaply in return for continuing to work on the house, or give them credit on the rent for each project they completed... maybe even do some sort of a rent to own agreement too.
While this sounds like an interesting idea it threw up a lot of red flags in my head... what if the renter does really terrible work or screws something up that might be behind a wall and not easy to see. Since they would be living in FL and the house is in NY it's not like they could inspect each project as it's completed. Or maybe even worse, what if the renter falls of a ladder while he's trying to fix the roof or something and hurts himself and sues them?
They said that they've known people who have been in similar arrangements and things have worked out well... so I'm asking you guys if you have ever done or heard of something like this? If so, do you have any ideas on what they could do or put into the contract to protect themselves from the risks?
Thanks,
Brett
