Anecdotal : Sale And Rent Back Hell

[Sledgehead]

First one of these I've heard by word of mouth. Must be plenty more as I'm a hermit.

A personal friend and her hubbie used to go to "lavish" parties held down in Devon. This year the invitation never arrived. Turns out the parties would now have to be held on the back seat of a family saloon. The hosts, unbeknownst to their guests, had entered into a sale and rent back agreement with some BMV outfit. Just like the hosts, the BMV outfit were partying on other people's money, and when that ran out, the "guarantee" of secure renting tenure vaished as quickly as the party Caspian Beluga used to.

The people who enter into such deals at BMV often do so because they have other pressing debts to clear. With those debts repaid from the discounted wedge received from the sale and rent back outfit, there is seldom enough money left to rejoin the ranks of property ownership. For the party hosts, things were clearly much grimmer. Years of over-indulgence seems to have left them with little more than a car. Let's just hope they've budgetted for the petrol to run the engine on chilly nights.

Still, can't say they had not been warned.

[Lagarde's Drift]

I wonder if someone will write the equivalent "Great Gatsby" describing people from the early part of this century.

Edit: They could move into a cheap thatched cottage near Exeter, I know of one.

Edited August 6, 2010 by Cash with Nowhere to Go

[whoami]

Sale and rent back 'guarantees' are rarely for more than a year, although you'd have to take a magnifying glass to the small print to find that out, and few sellers do before they sign.

The BMV salesmen assure their prospects that "of course they can live in their 'own' home after the sale - it's guaranteed". They just forget to mention the length of the guarantee period.