Any rent to own properties around bay area (specially east bay) (real estate, rentals)

[ggcd951]

I have been renting past few years throwing away ~30000 in rental income. Housing price is too mcuh even condos. Alternative I figured perhaps if there are properties that offer rent which counts toward purchasing unit at the end of term. It is usually seem unpopular and I found real estate website offering exactly that service. But those are mostly houses and asking for rental rate of average of 10000$ a month. I obviously can not afford that.

[jdhpa]

Rents generally track mortgage payments, so yeah, rents in the Bay Area are insane and make it extremely hard to save money to buy a house. It's pretty hard everywhere, though. I hope you find a rent-to-own opportunity, please post if you do, I'm sure other people would find it useful.

If you're still single, you might want to consider living out of a van for a while. Then your transportation expense doubles as your living expense, and you can actually save money to buy a house. I wouldn't say it's common, but people certainly do it. Here's a YouTube channel with a lot of practical advice (there are quite a few YouTube channels on people living out of their van in urban areas, the one I linked is geared more toward retirees).

This is a local company that outfits vans to make them living spaces (I have no association with them and have never used their services, so I can't speak to the quality of their work, but it's worth checking out). There is no bathroom, so people join a 24 Hour Fitness or other similar low-cost gym so they have a place to take a shower and use the facilities.

Of course, the cheapest way to go is just buy a van and throw a cot in the back, but if you want some amenities and don't want to do it yourself (like insulating the van so you don't freeze in winter and melt in summer), having someone do it who builds out lots of vans is an option.

Good luck!

[ggcd951]

i got a kid sharing custody with mother so van living is not really an option although i would like to do so. secondly getting older, whenever i go for camping, sleeping in a cramped setting causes me to fatigue and hemorrhoid goes off bleeding.

[aslowdodge]

I’d be careful of those rent to own contracts. A lot of gotchas in them and nearly no one ever buys in the end. The big winner is the landlord in the contract.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by aslowdodge

I’d be careful of those rent to own contracts. A lot of gotchas in them and nearly no one ever buys in the end. The big winner is the landlord in the contract.

This. OP, most rent-to-owns are corporate-owned, IOW they're owned by Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), which means the rentals are a stock market commodity. Therefore it's not in the owners' interests to offer a fair deal. REITs exist to milk their rental sources for money to pay their shareholders with, and also to accrue value in the stock market for the corporate owners. They're very exploitive.

Beware.