Question: We own a single family home in the District which we have been renting for several years. We retained a real estate broker to assist us in selling, and were informed that we have to provide our tenant with the right to purchase.

Is this correct, and if so, what is the process?

Answer: In the District of Columbia, your home is not your castle. In Maryland (other than Takoma Park) and in Virginia, to the best of my knowledge, there are no such tenant rights.

Your broker is correct. Any tenant in the District -- whether living in a single family house, a duplex or a large apartment house -- has the right to purchase the property where he or she lives.

We call this the TOPA rights, which stands for the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, which became law in the District back in 1980.

Tenants must be provided with a Notice of Intent to Sell when the property in which they reside is up for sale. A landlord has two options:

• the tenants can be advised that there is a third party contract already in place, and the contract price is what the landlord will sell to the tenants, or

• there is no third party contract, but the landlord is considering selling for a certain price.

The rules are somewhat different depending on the number of rental units In the property. In a building which has more than 4 rental units, once the tenants receive the Notice from the landlord, the tenants have to organize as a tenant association, and only the association has the right to negotiate with the landlord/seller. The tenant association has up to 45 days in which to formally organize and advise the seller of their interest in purchasing.

In a building containing two-four units, all of the tenants jointly have these rights for a period of 15 days from receipt of a formal notice from the landlord. Then, if the joint tenants fail to advise the landlord of their interest, any individual tenant residing in the property has an additional 7 days to provide a statement of interest to the landlord.

In a single family house, tenants must respond to the landlord within 30 days of receipt of the Notice to sell.

The District has six TOPA forms available. For each of the three housing categories, there is one "with a third party contract" and one "without a third party contract." They are available at 941 North Capitol Street, NE. Unfortunately, since the website for the Department of Consumer Affairs is not up to the same standards as other District Government agencies, you cannot obtain these forms on-line.

Let's walk you through the process. You want to sell your single family house, and you and your broker have decided on a price. You have two options: you can try to determine if your tenant is really interested in purchasing and send the "without third party" TOPA notice. Or, you can put the house on the market, get a potential buyer, and then send the "with third party contract" TOPA notice.

In a single family house situation, I usually recommend the former. When buyers sign a real estate sales contract, they want to move in fairly quickly. If you wait until you get a contract, your tenant will have 30 days in which to express their interest in purchasing. If they do let you know they are interested, they then have an additional 60 days in which to negotiate a contract with you. And once a contract has been entered into, the tenant has an additional 60 days in which to go to settlement. If the tenant's lender advises you in writing that it needs more time to complete the loan process, the tenant has an additional 30 more days before settlement takes place.

So if you sign a contract with a third party, and then provide the TOPA notice to the tenant, he or she has up to 180 days to go to settlement. Under the law, the rights of a third party contract purchaser are subject to the rights of the tenant. This means that the third party contract is held in abeyance while the tenant is exercising the TOPA rights.

That is a very long time for any party to wait to learn if they will get the house.

The law requires that the landlord negotiate in good faith with the tenant. One element of bad faith is when the landlord refuses to accept the tenant's offer even when it substantially conforms to the terms and conditions of the third party contract.

Tenants have the right to assign their rights, and indeed a "cottage industry" has developed where strangers offer the tenant a sum of cash in exchange for the tenant's TOPA rights.

The landlord cannot ask the tenant to waive its TOPA rights. However, a tenant -- after receiving the appropriate form -- can agree that he or she has no interest in pursuing the transaction. There is interesting language in the law, that if a landlord offers some acceptable consideration to the tenant, then a waiver can be obtained.

This has led to what tenants call "tenant capitalism" and landlords call "tenant blackmail." In order to get a tenant out of the property quickly so that the house can be sold to the contract purchaser, landlords will often offer cash, or several months free rent, just to entice the tenant to move out quickly. This is legal, and landlords are now doing this all the time.

The law is complex, and in my opinion, for single family housing, should be abolished by our City Council.

But it is the law of the District of Columbia, and you should consult your legal advisors as soon as possible to make sure that you are in full compliance. When you go to settlement, the title company will insist on proof that you have met all of the various aspects of the law. The title insurance company does not want to fund a lawsuit whereby the tenant is challenging the sale on the grounds that the landlord did not comply with TOPA.