Talk:Land contract

De-obfusification and Clarification Needed Okay, I have an MSc in Physics and yet after reading this article I don't quite know what a Land Contract is. Perhaps an explanation that doesn't rely on the technical differences between "equitable title" and "legal title", neither of which anyone will know without referring to yet another page. The article claims that "equitable title" pretty much means "owner", but the fact that Dustin Diamond is loosing his house despite holding "equitable title" seems to indicate to me that it's not at all equivalent to the term "owner". IE: Explain what equitable title is instead of using the term, and explain what the consequences are. I'm *guessing* that Land Contract is effectively an agreement that you're the "owner", but you haven't paid for it yet and in fact you and the seller haven't even agreed on the terms of the sale, so technically your "ownership" could be reversed should you and the seller not come to an agreement in the future. Yes? No? Little help? 65.95.239.51 22:00, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I have expanded the article to try to explain "equitable title" and "legal title" and provided a numerical example for equitable title. However, it is a misconception (i. e. not true) that in a land contract, the seller and buyer have not agreed on the terms of the sale as stated in the above paragraph. The equitable title (ownership) of the buyer may be able to be reverted (reversed) if the buyer defaults on his required payment(s) and the land contract allows such a reversion in case of default. H Padleckas (talk) 07:54, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Restoration of Land contract article

Within a day or so, I intend to revert this Land contract article to the 08:37 Aug 3, 2008 version and then probably (perhaps later) make some explanatory edits (and add Land contract under "See also" section in Real estate contract), unless User:Eastlaw explains why this reversion of the redirect should not be done. What is usually called a land contract is a special form of real estate contract which involves the sale of real property with seller-financing to be repaid by the buyer in installments. A land contract differs from the usual or conventional type of real estate contract which does not involve seller-financing, but may be a full price purchase at time of sale or involve provisions for third party lender-financing. My opinion is this difference is sufficient to merit a separate Land contract article of its own. An alternative possibility could be to move the contents of the Land contract article to form a section "Land contract" in the Real estate contract article, but land contracts must be discussed somewhere in Wikipedia. H Padleckas (talk) 01:34, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Response copied from page User Talk:H Padleckas:

I don't mind if you want to revert the article back to what it was, just so long as 1) you clearly explain the differences between a land contract and a conventional real estate contract, and 2) you back up your explanation with reliable sources. The main reason I redirected the article in the first place was because I felt the article didn't really explain the distinction between these two types of contracts.

I am eager to see what you can do with this article. --Eastlaw (talk) 01:59, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I have reverted the Redirect and added explanations to explain item (1) above and some additional reasons/advantages in using a land contract with seller financing vs. conventional real estate contract with third party lender financing. I have added a couple references explaining some of these points as requested in (2) above. Some of the discussion I included is based on my personal experience with land contracts to which I was a party. Yet to be added are possible drawbacks or "pitfalls" of using a land contract as mentioned in Reference 2 in the article. H Padleckas (talk) 08:22, 7 August 2008 (UTC)