Leasing Property Before Closing

Since we would like to begin building as soon as we sign on the dotted line, the owners of the land leased the land to us until our closing date which isn't until November. The sellers don't want to close until then to avoid paying capital gains, and even though we have been approved for financing, we would like to have our house sold so we can pay cash for the land. No money changed hands, but still the lease is beneficial to both of us.

In the next two months, we hope to have a culvert, road and fence across the front. The county issued me an address Monday, but didn't say when the culvert inspection (Yes, can you believe it? They have to approve the location of the culvert.) will be. I will say though, that Sissy, and everyone else we've talked to at the county planning department, has been great. We can't build a fence until the survey is done, and the surveyor is really dragging his heels on it, so for the moment, we aren't getting anything done.

Update, 2017

The reason our closing date was almost three months after we signed the purchase contract was so the sellers could avoid capital gains. Their time limit was up in November. But. After we signed that contract and the lease, they were in absolutely no hurry to get anything done. If the price per acre hadn't been so attractive, we wouldn't have done it. The pros are that it gave us plenty of time to sell our house, though we didn't need it. The cons are that we had to do a short term rental for a longer period of time.