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hi I'm Ellen riddle I'm a staff attorney with Maryland volunteer lawyers service and I'm gonna take a minute today to talk to you about rent to own contracts so I'm gonna tell you what that is and things to look out for potential problems with these types of contracts and what you should do if you're thinking about entering into one of these contracts so a rent-to-own contract is really a lease it's a regular lease to rent a property and there's usually in addition to the lease at the end that's called an option contract it's an option to buy the property at some later point sometime in the future so the important thing to know about these contracts is if you sign one under under Maryland law you are still a tenant not a home buyer so if you sign a rent-to-own contract you're not a homeowner until you actually get your name on the deed and that doesn't happen until later on in the process if you if you make it that far so it's a regular lease and then the option at the that they add on to the lease is where you're paying your you basically putting up money upfront for this option which is you the landlord is giving you the opportunity to buy the property and there's usually conditions that are listed in the contract so that'll say when you're allowed to exercise that contract and actually buy the property from the landlord so that usually includes it'll have the the purchase price in the contract and then it'll say you know once you're able to save up a certain amount of money for a down payment something like that it'll have certain conditions that you have to meet before you can actually buy the property from the landlord the other important thing to know is that a lot of times in these contracts there's some sort of amount from the rent that you're paying every month that's supposed to go toward that down payment but the problem with a lot of contracts that we see is that the amount that set aside is never going to be enough on his own to to get to that down payment so the person if they want to exercise the contract is still going to have to usually find some some sort of contract for financing outside of the amount that they're saving up through the the rent the other big problem with these contracts is that there's no home inspection there's nothing like that there's no process like that that normal homeowners and the mortgage kind of process get they get those protections but a lot of people that sign rent to own contracts don't get that so they may sign the rental contract and there may be some really serious problems with the property and they're either stuck with them or they have to just decide not to buy the not to buy the property and then they lose that money that they've already paid so if you're thinking about doing a rent-to-own contract make sure you look really carefully at the terms of the contract you know who's responsible for repairs and maintenance how much money you're gonna have to put down and what the purchase price of the property is sometimes the the purchase price can end up being a lot more a lot less than than what the property is actually worth by the time you can actually buy the property so there's just all things to watch out for and I would really encourage you if you're thinking about signing a contract like that to talk to an attorney have them go over the contract with you so that if there's any problems or any anything you should be aware of before signing it you'll you'll know before you sign