Buying on a Land Contract
ORC 5313.07 — five years or twenty percent changes everything
A land contract is a sale where the deed stays with the seller until the price is paid. That arrangement is legal and it is common in Ohio, and it puts a buyer in a position that is neither quite an owner nor quite a tenant. The chapter that governs it turns on one threshold, and which side of it somebody is on decides almost everything.
Who handles this in Ohio: legal aid programs, lawyer referral and the state offices, listed in the Ohio directory.
Five years of payments, or twenty percent of the price, and forfeiture stops being available. Where the buyer has paid in accordance with the contract for five years or more from the date of the first payment, or has paid toward the purchase price a total equal to or more than twenty percent of it, the seller may recover possession only by foreclosure and judicial sale. Not by forfeiture, not by an eviction, not by changing the locks. Either condition is enough on its own, and twenty percent arrives a great deal sooner than five years on most contracts.
That difference is worth more than it sounds. A forfeiture ends the contract and takes the payments with it. A foreclosure is a court case with a sale, a surplus, and the same redemption window any other foreclosure carries.
Below the threshold there are still two waits, not none. A forfeiture may be enforced only after thirty days have passed from the date of the default. Then the seller initiates it by serving a written notice specifying which terms and conditions have not been complied with, and telling the buyer the contract stands forfeited unless they perform within ten days of the completed service of that notice. Those are two separate periods, and the notice has to say what was actually breached rather than that something was.
| Where the buyer is | What the seller may do |
|---|---|
| Where the buyer isUnder five years and under twenty percent | What the seller may doForfeiture, after thirty days from default and a written notice giving ten days to perform |
| Where the buyer isFive years of payments or more | What the seller may doForeclosure and judicial sale only |
| Where the buyer isTwenty percent of the price paid or more | What the seller may doForeclosure and judicial sale only |
Twenty percent counts what has gone toward the purchase price. Working out where a contract sits against that figure is a question about the arithmetic of the payments rather than about how long somebody has lived there, and it is the first thing worth establishing.
“How much of the purchase price has been paid, and when was the first payment.”
What a land contract has to contain, the seller's recording duty, and the annual statement a buyer is entitled to each sit in their own sections of the same chapter and are not on this page. Whether payments were made in accordance with the contract, how interest and other charges are treated against the purchase price, and whether a particular notice was sufficient are questions for a licensed Ohio attorney, and legal aid offices across the state handle land contract cases, which are a known route to losing a house in this state.
Sources for this section (3)
- ORC 5313.07 — When a seller may recover the property only by foreclosure and judicial sale
- ORC 5313.06 — The written notice of default, and the ten days it gives to perform
- ORC 5313.05 — The thirty days from default before a land contract forfeiture may be enforced
Legal information, not legal advice. Verified as of September 2026. Applying it to a particular situation is the work of a licensed Ohio attorney.