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If you're unlucky, you end up with http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/29/world/a-120-year-lease-on-... (1995):

"Andre-Francois Raffray thought he had a great deal 30 years ago: He would pay a 90-year-old woman 2,500 francs (about $500) a month until she died, then move into her grand apartment in a town Vincent van Gogh once roamed.

But this Christmas, Mr. Raffray died at age 77, having laid out the equivalent of more than $184,000 for an apartment he never got to live in.

On the same day, Jeanne Calment, now listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's oldest person at 120, dined on foie gras, duck thighs, cheese and chocolate cake at her nursing home near the sought-after apartment in Arles, northwest of Marseilles in the south of France."

So she lived in a nursing home for 10 years but still didn't let the guy live in the apartment? I know she had the right to it but come on...

If she wanted to give someone money, wouldn't it be better to give it to the poor?!

He has no rights to the house until she dies. This is perfectly within her contract with him.

So she can get his payments, and money from a subletter? I guess it's part of the game.

Yes, it is. It's still also her being a douche.

Contract rights have nothing to do with the morality of this...

The morality is already clearly established: in exchange for a very small monthly sum, you get the property when the owner dies. The property may be a dedicated rental unit already, so whether or not the owner lives there has no bearing. So it's not just _within_ the contract, it's the _purpose_ of the contract.

>The morality is already clearly established: in exchange for a very small monthly sum, you get the property when the owner dies.

That's, again, the contract. Seems some people can't tell between legal and moral, unless we talk about the 70s and segregation or something like that...

No, I (and presumably the other posters) can tell the difference - I just disagree on the morality, partly because I think the legal aspects are related to the moral aspects.

The guy purchased the right to the house once the current owner dies, but you believe it's immoral for her to continue living in it, or renting it out, or loaning it to friends, while she is alive. I think it's immoral to demand the house while she's alive, since that wasn't the deal.

Sometimes legality and morality are widely separated, but here they seem related.

It is a lottery with two participants that willingly took part in it. She won big, but if she had died the day after the contract was signed, he would have won big: he would have gotten the house for about $500. Would you suggest he should have paid her inheritance a lump sum if that would have happened?

I don't see much harm in "winning big" over somebody who just died. Being dead, it's not like she would have missed the money.

On the other hand, having someone pay tons of money and then die without anything to show for it, I do see, even if he "willingly signed into it".

There's also a threshold over which it should just be handed over. That such a threshold wasn't in the contract doesn't make it any less odious.

Her heirs would have disagreed. Consider the case where your mother owns a house and 'sells' it for $500 just before dying.

Also, I expect people buying such rights are generally well-off, and the people selling it to be relatively poor. After all, the buyer must be able to pay money on a house they cannot live in for an indeterminate period, and the seller typically chooses this construct to be ensured of both a roof over their head and money to live from for one's entire life, no matter how long that is.

The odds in this lottery get better every month for the buyer, so, assuming that the buyer can afford to buy into this, they should have no reason to want to get out of this.

He would have had to make a down-payment on the house too. You pay e.g. half the total payment up front and then the remainder in monthly installments. Still, it would have been a quarter of the retail price, not half, in that case.

The morality is that he got exactly what she offered and exactly what he asked and paid for, and the arrangement was perfectly consensual. It would be immoral for him to demand more, without additional payment.

I fail to see anything immoral here.

You'd think the contract would say that in addition to being alive you have to actually live in the house as well. Otherwise you could just sublet it out and have someone else pay you for it while you live somewhere else. Seems kind of counter to the intention of the idea.

I guess that is the risk for this approach. This could almost be the premise for an Edgar Allan Poe poem. It's almost too perfect

HN discussion on that story from a wee while back:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11367422

Being French, I never heard of someone doing this with strangers. On the other hand, it's a well known way to bypass succession fees : parents sell (or find a way to pass on without monetary exchange) the house in viager to their children, and continue living there until they die.

That way, even in a case where there is disagreement in the family later on, parents can't be forced out of the house.

Same thing in Italy concerning succession. It exists as well with strangers, but I never heard a regular payment was involved: you just buy the so-called "nude property" and then wait.

"bare property" :)

It's a low-profile business but transactions between strangers aren't as rare as one might think. Paris has a few notaires specialized in rente voyagère working in tandem with financial advisors. I know Toulouse and Aix also have those.

It can be a great solution for an old homeowner with meager retirement earnings and no natural beneficiaries.

I thought you couldn't do it with members of your family, has it changed? Didn't have a look at it for a while...

It is also a very strong motive for murder. I wouldn't want to go into such a deal with a stranger who "wins" a very large sum of money when I die...

Statistically, people overwhelmingly are not murderers.

Even people with motive.

But such a thing would attract them. Like rich people attract kidnappers.

Generally people who kidnap believe they can get away with it by never being in the frame as it were. Given that you'd be one of the prime suspects on motive alone in this case, it seems like a bet on being able to commit a "perfect" murder.

I don't think it's a likely occurrence

Is there a faster way of becoming prime suspect? The kidnapping equivalent would be allowing random people to take out 'kidnap insurance' on you (with your agreement). If it so happens that you are kidnapped, it's pretty obvious which door the investigators will knock first.

But this attracts the few who are.

Actually it wouldn't be. You are buying an asset for 50% off which will continue to go up in price. And you get to pay a rentor a cheap rent to take care of your asset their entire lives.

It's a great deal if you can get it. The only time this will get problematic is if housing prices drop and continue to drop.

My American university has bought property in this manner. There were several old houses on the fringes of the campus with elderly owners. The university bought the properties years ago, but the owners continued to live in them until they died. Once the property transferred, the university bulldozed the houses to build new research facilities.

You forgot to add "under mysterious circumstances".

Usually in this situation the university becomes the landlord and the inhabitants are protected just under the usual tenancy and eviction laws.

I believe it is called a reverse mortgage in the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_mortgage

In the states, the bank is lending you money and essentially building equity in your home. If your heirs pay the loan off when you die, they often may keep the house.

It's a no-lose proposition for the bank, presuming they charge a profitable interest rate. But, they are not guaranteed to get the house at the end of the deal.

>Reverse mortgages allow elders to access the home equity they have built up in their homes now, and defer payment of the loan until they die, sell, or move out of the home. Because there are no required mortgage payments on a reverse mortgage, the interest is added to the loan balance each month. The rising loan balance can eventually grow to exceed the value of the home, particularly in times of declining home values or if the borrower continues to live in the home for many years. However, the borrower (or the borrower’s estate) is generally not required to repay any additional loan balance in excess of the value of the home

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_mortgage

This exists in Italy as well, but it usually doesn't include a rent. You just buy the house at a discount. It's very very common in areas which are rapidly gentrifying.

What is the Italian name for this type of contract?

nuda proprietà

That's what I supposed (I am Italian myself) but it looks different from the French thing. From what I understand with "nuda proprietà" you buy the apartment but cannot use it until the person in residence dies or voluntarily leaves. But you the owner will not pay anything to the "tenant". So there is no extra spending even if the person using the place lives much longer than expected.

Well nuda proprietà is actually a bit more general a concept: it just means that one person has ownership and the other has all the other benefits. Remember when Berlusconi touted that as the solution to his conflict of interest?

Don't we just call this a reverse mortgage in the US?

from my understanding, reverse mortgage is a mortgage where the owners slowly encumber their property with debt. If the owners die (or decide to sell), the property is still the owners, but it has the mortgage debt on it so they have to pay that off as part of the process.

these days, it is better to just move into a smaller flat and rent out the larger property at market rates.

This also happens in New York— one can buy an apartment with a rent-stabilized tenant in a building which has been converted to a coop. The tenant has a right to lease renewals until they die (and any family living with them at time of death has a right to lease renewals as well).

Here is one: http://streeteasy.com/building/243-west-98-street-new_york/7...

I'd be suspicious of a building that uses Comic Sans on its awning.

Israel Horovitz made a movie about it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Old_Lady_(film)