Viager

“Viager” might sound like a knock-off name for everyone’s favorite little blue pill, but it’s not. It’s actually a French system of real estate sales that is…well, it could be construed as a little weird.

Basically, the buyer buys the house—pays a down payment and makes payments on it and everything—but doesn’t actually get to take possession and move in until the seller dies. The seller gets to stay in the house and collect the income from those mortgage payments for the rest of their life.

They work kind of like a reverse annuity, and they’re always between two private individuals or entities. As one might imagine, this is crazy risky for the buyer. As one might also imagine, viagers are a lot more popular when the seller is older or in ailing health than when the seller is, say, a strapping young 22-year-old, clean-living triathlete. Viagers are most popular with buyers in their 40s and 50s who are looking for a retirement home, and are comfortable enough to start paying on it now, in hopes that the seller kicks off before they want to move in. Morbid, but true. Because how much the buyer ends up paying for the house depends on how long the seller stays alive. And if the buyer happens to die before the seller does, then the buyer’s kids have to keep on paying the mortgage.

All in all, it’s a pretty risky way to buy a house. On the one hand, a buyer could end up paying substantially less than market value for a house if the seller passes away earlier than expected. Or their kids could end up making payments on a house that no one in the family has ever lived in.