Your existing tenant wishes to buy the flat. The parties know each other, and the rooms are familiar to the buying side. Nevertheless, two processes must be coordinated: the existing tenancy and the planned property transfer. Our editorial approach for Austria and Germany prepares this coordination. It does not automatically determine the end of a tenancy or a right to set off.
Record the existing rental status
Compile the applicable contract, amendments and the actual payment status. Outstanding statements or specific questions remain visible with their own reference. An old rental issue is not resolved merely because there is now a purchase interest.
Also identify the existing security and its actual form. The article does not recommend automatically converting a deposit into a purchase-price instalment. Which treatment fits the specific transaction will be agreed legally and financially.
Redescribe the scope of the purchase
The tenant may know their flat, but not all the sales documents or the scope now intended. Explicitly check ancillary rooms, parking spaces and items offered with the sale. Past use and future acquisition of ownership are not equated by habit alone.
Collect outstanding property questions just as carefully as you would for another purchaser. Longstanding familiar use does not replace the professionally required examination. At the same time, not every private rental correspondence must be copied into the new sale file.
Keep two calendars side by side
Our recommendation: record the currently confirmed tenancy-related steps and the planned purchase-process steps separately. Ask legal counsel how the two should be connected in time and content. The article does not state that rent payments automatically end upon signing the contract.
In a hypothetical case, a tenant wants to pay less rent from the planned notary appointment because they already consider themselves the future owner. The seller treats this as a concrete structuring question. She has the actual sequence, the respective payments and the necessary connection explained, instead of permitting a private set-off on the spot or asserting a general legal rule.
Think ahead for a purchase that does not materialise
What happens organisationally if the plan is delayed or not carried out? The answer must fit the existing legal situation. An ongoing tenancy process should therefore not be hastily removed from administration while the purchase is unresolved.
Declarations already made and proposed agreements are fully included in the advice. The article does not declare any preparatory message universally without consequences and does not formulate a universal termination agreement.
Keep the final account with clear descriptions
After professional structuring, the actually agreed items are recorded with purpose, period and documentation. A purchase price is recognisable as such, a rent payment remains allocated, and a statement has its own status. Avoid a single undescribed overall balance.
This way the familiarity of the previous cooperation can be preserved. It does not replace the new clarification of how the tenancy and the intended purchase are actually to be brought together. Both parties can decide on a comprehensible basis, instead of discovering differing ideas only when a payment is made.