Lease Options Legals

Hi Cat

I have been warning against the risks of Lease options since they first reared their ugly heads and were getting touted by property investment Guru's in 2009.

Please take a look at this video blog dated 2011 >>> http://www.property118.com/lease-options-how-do-they-work-and-should-they-be-regulated/18739/

In my experience, people who get into lease options are wannabees with very little money who have fallen for the dream of owning property with very little money which has been sold to them by an unscrupulous self proclaimed guru who's made enough money selling dreams to lease a supercar in order to impress more wannabees at the next networking event!

I am not a solicitor but I have worked as a Consultant to a few legal practices and I know enough about this subject to know that most decent lawyers with any morals will not touch this business model in the residential sector with a barge pole.

This is probably not the answer you wanted to hear and I have been attacked on many forums on several occasions for holding this view. However, we are all entitled to our opinions.

Hi Cat,

Options - not lease options - are very common in commercial transactions and work very well.

Lease options on *residential* property is another matter.

They are unproven in this country and are likely to become a regulated activity in the not too distant future, due to the risky nature of them.

On Property Tribes, we have a whole category dedicated to lease options. It has gone very quiet of late which suggests to me that most newbies have given up or seen through the Emporer's latest set of duds ....

http://www.propertytribes.com/lease-options-tribe-f-30.html

Have you found someone who is willing to sell on that basis? I agree with Mark - it's a scam. If you can buy, buy, if not rent and save to buy. Someone offered on my property on this basis and I just said if you want it, buy it, why would I commit to sell to you for a future unknown amount when you are not so committed and I don't know what state I'll get my property back in.

I hope you didn't pay for the courses.

Hi Mark,

I can't believe your maverick comments.

Particularly given that your concerns are echoed by the FSA 🙂

See this press release; http://www.mortgagestrategy.co.uk/latest-news/fsa-warns-of-serious-problems-in-lease-options-market/1054040.article

@ewemove

The article you linked to was from July 2012!! WIsh it was from July this year! So nearly a year later that FSA (and now the FCA) have not taken any action against lease options.

The GRQ gurus are still preaching them and misleading people with marketing straplines like "buy a house for a pound" etc.

At least there are some moves to regulate Joint Ventures and protect newbies from putting money into these property collective investment schemes that are springing up all over the place.....

@ewemove - I was pretty much a lone voice when I raised this back in 2009. When I first discovered PT I found a thread started by Nick Parkin called "sandwiches for lunch anyone?" but I can't find it now. Maybe Vanessa can help and post a link to the thread here?

Nick Parkin asked for all his content to be deleted when we moved PT to the new site, so we no longer have that thread Mark, but I do recall it.

Hi Vanessa, that's a real shame as it was a very long thread which many people added content to. It's such a shame that deleting the content of one person wiped out all my efforts and everybody else's contributions. That thread would have been great to look back on as it would now expose the hypocrisy of so many people who have since done a complete u turn on this issue. Four years ago some people who now claim to agree with my views were hyper critical of me at the time and were even bragging about doing this type of deal!

Hi Vanessa

I've been thinking about what you said about a demand to delete content and I have concluded that such a demand has no validity. If it did, and each person owned what they had written on an open forum, everybody else who's content was deleted would have a claim against you for deleting their content. That would simply be ridiculous! Can you imagine how many claims a forum owner would have against them on that basis if they decided to cancel the payments to their web-server hosts!

As a forum owner you have the right to moderate as you see fit. As I see it, once content has been posted to the web it has been committed to open forum for as long as the forum owner chooses to keep it there.

I also believe there to be several web based archives which store information, one example being Wayback Machine. I've had a look there and can still see Nick's articles and comments. What I can't do is search within Wayback Machine but I'm sure there will be others which can be searched. My point is that this proves my point regarding an individual not owning content or indeed the copyright of content which they publish to the web, otherwise all the archive websites would also be wide open to massive claims against them too.

Therefore, if you can restore the content I suggest you do so. Nick and a few others might not like it, especially those who are shown to be hypocrites but that's their problem, not yours or mine.

Hi Mark,

If someone wants their content to be deleted, and they started the thread, they have the right/ability to delete that thread. That is how forums are set up.

It happened in the case of Phil Martin. He posted that he was going bankrupt. We had over 500 replies. PM then deleted the thread. That is his privilege.

In the case of Nick Parkin, he wanted ALL his material removed, not just threads he started. We agreed to that request for our own valid reasons.

In the case of Richard Greenland, following his huge disruption of Property Tribes with attacks and defamatory comments on various people, including me and Nick, we decided to suspend him until such times as we had discovered what his grievance was. We attempted to resolve it via email but that proved to be impossible.

On Ning, this removed his avatar, but left his name, his signature, with links to his website and blog.

Greenland then wrote defamatory posts about us elsewhere claiming that we had "stolen his content without proper attribution". Of course, that is utter non-sense. He then said he was going to charge us for keeping his content! He also made various other threats.

The fact is, we didn't actually want his content as it was mostly disruptive and petty, so, when we moved to the new site, and it became clear from emails that there was no chance of reconciliation, we asked what he wanted to do about his content and he said he wanted it deleted, so we complied with his request.

I think you have to look at it on a case by case basis and assess the value to the forum vs. the problems if you do decide to keep content against the will of the writer.

For us, in both these cases, it simply wasn't worth it to us to try and keep their content on the site. Deleting it allowed a clean break for both parties.