Rent to own structure

[Natalie Lindsey]

We have a tenant that has been renting from us for about 5 years. He has mentioned several times that he is interested in purchasing the home from us through a rent to own type situation. He has been a good tenant and we have never raised the rent in those 5 years. He is paying $750.00 a month for rent. My husband and I are leaning towards asking around $90,000 for him to buy it. We just aren’t sure how to structure the deal. If we would do a rent to own type situation would it be fair to ask maybe for a $5,000 nonrefundable down payment up front that would go towards the $90,000 purchase price? So they would owe $85,000 when it was time to close? I don’t really want to put any of the monthly $750.00 towards the purchase of the price because we still pay a lot of the fees associated with the home like insurance, property taxes, repairs, garbage fees, etc. out of that amount. If he would ask for us to put some of his monthly payment to the purchase price should we tell him we can only do that if we raise the rental amount? Any advice on how to structure the deal would be great! Thanks for taking the time to help me with this in advance!