All Forum Posts by: Andy B.

if you or someone authorized by you did not sign the contract, you are not under contract. Unless you gave this unknown party the authority to bind you to a contract, the fact that they exercised the contract has no binding impact on you. 

Without knowing the exact communication between you and your attorney, it cannot be determined whether the attorney failed to do what they were hired to do.  As stated by @Steve L.f you asked them to draft a release and they drafted a release, they did right by you and you should pay for the work.  The question is whether you told the attorney the story and explained what you wanted to happen (i.e. get a new contract).

That being said, I do not believe what you wanted was legally achievable. I am not intimately familiar with TOPA, but from my brief reading on the subject, it appears that any time an owner wants to sell, the owner is required to notify the tenants.  So, TOPA was violated already because the owner entered into a contract with you and did not notify the tenants.  The only way around the situation (from what I can see) is to have delivered the proper notice to the tenants and waited the time for them to decide -- if they were agreeing to move out, most likely they would not have jumped through the hoops to purchase and you would postpone closing approx. 2 months. I do not see how releasing the contract would change that at all.  If you entered into an agreement saying that the owner would agree to a sale contract after the tenants moved out, I think TOPA would still be triggered -- agreeing to agree to sell would probably be considered the same as agreeing to sell.  

In step #2 -- if you do not charge market rent, you are going to be deemed to have gifted the rental amount to the 2nd party and you will be required to pay gift taxes on that amount.

@Richard C. your car analogy is apples to oranges. There is no law (at least not in a state I am aware of) that to sell real estate you have to be a licensed agent. There are laws that state that the sale of a certain number of cars requires being a "dealership". I can sell 200 houses this year and never get a license - I cannot sell 200 cars this year without a dealer's license.

For general reference, whenever you sell a property, the Buyer can "obtain" a warranty deed. As the Seller, you can transfer title in whatever way you see fit. A deed is nothing more than the Seller's agreement to transfer title. So, if you take ownership now via Quit Claim Deed, there is nothing to prevent you from giving a Warranty Deed when you sell.

The only concern is will a title company grant title insurance on a property that has a Quit Claim Deed in the chain of title.

You have been told wrong. Title passes to someone else immediately upon death of the owner. Granted, until probate is complete the passage of title is not legally complete, but there is no point in time where "no one" holds title (and a dead person can never hold title).

As others have said, you can add language to contract to protect yourself from the son coming after you for the mobile home, but if the son does not hold title to the mobile home, you cannot become the owner unless you find the guy who holds title and get them to pass it to you.

If the parent's are deceased, the title passed to someone else - you should find out who it passed to and get them to transfer the title to you. If the guy you are dealing with owns the land, he probably has title to the mobile as well.

When I review leases for clients, I look for the kickout clauses and any other right to terminate -- my clients want to make sure the rental stream is maintained. Also, there are some clauses that put monetary obligations on Landlord - costs to upgrade to meet new ADA, responsible for haz mat, etc. and some clients worry about clauses that require Landlord to use insurance money to rebuild the property after a casualty (banks like the ability to use that money to pay off loan, so it may make it a little harder to get funding).

I think your best bet is to talk to your Landlord and tell them you need to move out on whatever date you are moving and have them tell you the process.

As long as you are not asking for partial rent back after the move, I doubt they will have a problem getting the apartment back sooner and doing the move-out walk-through then.

Great topic - looking forward to new posts.

I did laugh at your NNN, NN thing -- my main business is negotiating retail leases (mostly from tenant side) and have a client fighting over that very thing. The lease says it is a "net, net, net lease" but they never defined what that meant and now we are fighting over who owes what for various items.

As far as your delivery date with penalty, I have done many deals where the delivery was "no later than ________" - this allows delivery sooner -- might look into that for your deal so you can get rent faster after completion but still allow time to avoid the penalty.