Do I just ask my Landlord if he

[bethie_73]

is in pre foreclosure? Ugh, I just don't want to have no time to move, and if he is not using my rent to pay the mortgage, I'd rather have it go somewhere without the worry.

I don't want to offend him, but I know he has missed at least one payment (its not hard to figure out, certified letters, bank coming and looking for him etc). I've never had this issue before, anyone have any ideas?

[mamalia]

Yes, to protect yourself and your family! Only one year into law school (and hopefully the lawyers on the boards will chime in), but I just wanted to offer what info I did have...
I think you can request that your landlord provide adequate assurance that he will be able to perform under the rental contract, his "failure to provide within a REASONABLE time such assurance of due performance as is ADEQUATE in the circumstances of the particular case" can be treated as a repudiation of the contract.

I'm quoting from R.2d of Contracts, which many states have adopted, but you should check with a lawyer in your state to see:
* If R.2d or some other rule is followed
* What is adequate assurance (I would think it would be a letter from the bank showing mortgage payments are up to date and he is not at risk of foreclosure)
* What is a reasonable time (I would think 2 weeks?)

You may be able to get free legal advice through your city/county, news agency, or local university/library. If you go the non-legal route, maybe you could write him a certified letter indicating your concerns and requesting this assurance. I think if you explain your reasons like you did here he should not be offended. You are just looking out for your family.

A sad, cautionary story: a young couple in our neighborhood expecting their first baby found out the hard way that their rental home went into foreclosure. The landlords had been having marital problems, over leveraged their property, and turns out they hadn't been making the payments since they rented it out!

[Aishe]

You might just try googling your address. We are house-shopping and many times I have been able to determine if a house is in pre-foreclosure by doing this. There's a lot more information out there than I would have imagined.

[KrystalS]

You definitely need to ask and soon! We were renting a house that went into foreclosure. Same thing was happening with us, the mortgage company was sending people out to the house, certified letters in the mail. This had never happened to us before so I assumed because we were renting through a realty company that we would be okay through the term of our lease. I was totally wrong. We ended up finding out about the foreclosure because the city mailed a foreclosure notice to the house instead of to the owners. The owners didn't even bother to notify us until 2 wks before the house was going into foreclosure. Long story short, we had about a month to find a new place to live, didn't have time to find another house so we ended up in an apartment. We had to put half our furniture in storage. Our property manager through the realty company told us that something will have to change soon with how leases are done because the renters aren't protected at all when a home goes into foreclosure. We got lucky and our property manager was really great, he didn't make us have the carpet cleaned and the place definitely wasn't spotless when we moved out, we still got all of our security deposit back.