reported
Rent-to-buy deals are quite common, but I doubt they convert into sales very often.
Unfortuntely, when you buy a house you take a great big leap of faith about many things - I’ve spent longer choosing a perfume in a department store than I spent viewing my current home, purely because there were ten other buyers queueing up to make an offer.
To mitigate some of the other factors you suggest, I have in the past rented a house in a neighbourhood I fancied before choosing to buy. Thank god I did in the last place I rented in London - turns out we HATED the neighbourhood. That would have been a very costly mistake.
It happens, but it’s pretty unusual. Most people selling a house want to be rid of it; they don’t want to be landlords, even for a few months. Sometimes a brief rental period occurs because the buyer was all set to close but there was a last-minute snafu with the financing. A generous seller might allow that person to rent the property for a couple months. Best case, the financing problem gets solved and you close the sale. Worst case, you now have a squatter who stops paying rent and you have to evict them, after you’ve just spent a ton of money and stress moving (perhaps far away).
So most seller’s agents and lawyers would advise their clients not to do this, and instead just find someone who’s ready to buy.
Unless, of course, you can afford it. Some friends of mine were on the fence about a house they were looking at. They decided to rent it for a few months to make up their mind. In the end, they decided not to buy it and it only cost them $30,000.
The next year they did pick a new house, but they can’t pull the trigger on selling their first house so they own both and flip flop where they stay.
One of them has another business in a different state. He was sick of staying in hotels, so he bought a condo to live in when he’s there.
Most people don’t rent a house they’re planning to buy, but then there’s those ‘more money than god’ people who can afford pretty much whatever they want.
My parents have been landlords for the last 20 years or so, with up to 5 condos at a time (now they are winding down).
Numerous times tenants have wanted to buy the condo, but they always can’t come up with any significant down payment nor can they qualify for the loan. So they always want my parents to hold the mortgage. My parents aren’t idiots, so they always refuse. This usually leads to the tenants leaving in a huff. They must have had 40-50 tenants over the years, I don’t think a single one has ever moved out because they were buying a house.
Renting before buying introduces much uncertainty on all parties. The way to avoid this is to write, in a purchase offer, a contingency that allows a comprehensive inspection. The inspection will uncover items that are of concern, or perhaps need further investigation. No assurance that everything will be covered, but uncertainties are diminished. What, in life, doesn’t have uncertainties?
Renting your house to a bunch of zombies, just invites all sorts of problems.
But seriously, as a seller, I want to sell my house, and if I rent it to you for 2-3 months on the hopes that you will buy it, well, I’ve just taken it off the market that someone wanting to buy it outright may miss.
Rentals are investment properties. People depend on the long term income.
You won’t find many property owners that want to sell the home to their Renter.
Yeah, it is hard to imagine that the seller would be agreeable to this idea. It sounds awful. So much uncertainty with your house off the market for so long.
We just sold our old house and a quick and less risky closing was a big part of the attractiveness of the offer. They paid cash, waived the inspection contingency, and closed in 2.5 weeks. Done.
There would need to be serious compensation in the case of them “trying it out” and deciding to pass to make it worthwhile for me. Like way more than the market rate rent you’d get for those few months. And it’d need to be sitting in an escrow account with basically no mechanism for them to get it back if they decide not to buy.
Maybe in certain markets that are more buyer friendly that’d fly. But right now in my location any sane seller and seller’s agent would be howling with laughter at such an offer …
Where I live the houses sell immediately for over the asking price in most cases. So, there just isn’t a market for this. Some investors do buy homes and then rent them out, but no one is trying to do both. It happens in extreme circumstances. I know people who’ve rented houses for years and then been offered the chance to buy the house before it’s listed for sale, but that’s an entirely different thing.
I’m not a RE professional, but it would surprise me if you need a special clause for that.
Generally if you sell a property with an existing lease, the lease is still binding on the new owner. But if the new owner is the lessee, that seems like something they’ll probably be able to work out for themselves 
I know people who have bought houses they were currently renting, and people who have had their landlords offer to sell them houses they were currently renting, but it was always the rental that happened first, and then later the owner decided to sell and figured they might as well offer the house to someone who presumably already liked living there and might want to buy it rather than have to move.
This thread is 7 years old, btw. Just to warn people. I wonder if Welsey rented.
It makes sense for the buyer to rent. If you like the place, you can buy it, and you win - and you can likely reduce the offer since the seller won’t have the hassle of making the house ready to show again. If you don’t like it you walk, not much lost. The seller on the other hand doesn’t have much of an incentive to do it. Many states have laws protecting tenants, which might serve to screw the seller if the buyer/renter is a problem.
When we bought a house we rented it to the seller, since his under-construction house was late. We were living in town in a month-to-month rental. The terms set by our lawyer for our protection were a bit intricate. It worked out fine, though. It helps that our kids were in the same class in school.