Hi All, I was wondering if any of you that have investment properties or been in this suitation could help with the legal side.

We are looking at a house to buy in Melbourne, but it is tenanted at present and the lease does not expire until September this year. We will be buying it as our home and will need to sell our unit in order to pay for the house. We need more room with another on the way. We do not want to take on the tenant and have asked that if we were to buy that we have settlement in September. The vendor's response to this is that he wants September money or it's a 30 days settlement (we take on the tenant). How much we don't know. But from section 32's they only bought the property in May 2009 and leased in September now selling in January 2010. We have been told that the tenant does not want to break the agreement as she is a single mum. Which is why we said that we would have a settlement in September being fair we would have our unit to live in and they would be keeping there agreement with the tenant.

My question is even though we don't want to and would much prefer the longer settlement money wise and accomodation wise (bubba 2 due in July) we can't afford to get a huge mortgage to cover that house and have it leased and run our unit for 8mths. How does it work with tenants and buying and selling? Can we break the lease by purchasing the property or legally does the tenant have the right to stay even if it's sold.

I would appreciate hearing both sides and thank you advance for your thoughts.

Hansie