Pre Foreclosing Rental Lease With Option To Buy
This one is tricky. My husband and I are a young couple raising a family and trying to buy our first home. Unfortunately the oppertunity we have embarked upon has many grey areas. An aquantance we know had ran into some major financial issues when his business went belly up and he was no longer able to afford his mortgage payments. His original contract was an owner financed deal. He was days away from forecloser and we were told of a deal to buy the home with only 2500. down and we could move into residence while paying rent twards the purchase price. We signed a Rental Lease with Option to Buy Contract with certain home improvement stipulations and agreed to pay taxes/insurance on the property as well as the land. We have now invested over 14K twards purchase price as well as at least 5K in property improvements over the course of 20 months and although the timing is horrible here, we need to know if this is a binding legal contract. Anyone who has had similar experiences or knows anything about rental leases with option to buy in the State of Colorado, please help!!! We are trying to hire a lawyer, yet have no funds to do this as we have locked ourselves up into a co-dependant residential situation here. We need a place to live this is our only option right now with so much already invested. Any advice would be appreciated! 
do the following:
pull all the docs
check the signature
was anything recorded
get a lawyer, even if "free or cheap" legal aide on sliding scale.
What do you want to do with it?
This will be a good starting point.
In order to help you, we need to know more details about your situation.