Contract for deed purchase with existing tenants

Question

When purchasing a property contract for deed with an active month-to-month lease and tenants on the property, does that lease typically transfer to the purchaser? Or, is that something which has to be specified in the contract for deed?

The situation is: It wasn't specified. The seller was supposed to evict the tenants within 30 days. This was a verbal agreement. The seller attempted to evict, but the tenants aren't cooperating. We (buyer and seller) need to know who should be serving the official eviction notices. Eventually we believe this will require a local justice court filing as is typical here to evict an un-cooperative tenant. The issue is, we don't want the court rejecting everything because the wrong individual sent the 30 day notice, sent the 10 day notice and finally filed the court paperwork.

Answer 1

Of course this has completely played out now. It turned fairly ugly for a while and I eventually sought legal, local counsel.

It turns out, the tenants legally became mine (the buyers) from the moment we closed on the property. We had full rights and responsibility to provide them with a safe living area as well as to evict them when necessary. The sellers were also obligated to assist (and they did) due to the possibility of the buyers coming after them for damages and transferring the property in an unsatisfactory condition (with bad tenants) who's status was not technically disclosed other than verbally. The sellers in this case were willing to go above and beyond to help. The thing that helped all of us the most, was that the tenants stopped paying 6 months prior (as soon as the property went under contract). This was before Covid. If it had not been for this action on their part, we would have had zero recourse to evict them basically even up until and including today due to several factors: 1. It was a mobile home and they have an insane amount of time to move it (they owned the mobile/trailer). 2. Because of covid and they were section 8 tenants who "could not afford to pay rent anymore".

The tenants did leave as soon as they discovered we filed eviction and served them papers. We took a dual approach of, be nice as possible and do what we can to encourage the tenants to leave but also simultaneously start the legal proceedings.