Preforclosure lease option question

[Gannon Van Dyke]

Hey folks, lease option question in regards to buying preforclosure properties. Has anyone here used lease options to buy preforclosure's? 

I am a relatively experienced buy and hold investor. I typically market to preforclosure's and buy them cash, sub to, etc. A trend I have noticed though is that a lot of folks will get back to me the week of the auction because they fell out of contract with another investor, or just dragged their feet until the last hour of the last day and it turns into a crazy scrmable to postpone the auction. I recently had one that went bad, the owner reached out a few days before the auction, we sent all the appropriate docs to the lender. The lender kept dragging the process out and didn't give the trustee permission to postpone the auction in time. I felt horrible, and have been hesitant to touch anything that close to the foreclosure date again because I don't want to be part of the reason someone loses a home. I looked at things I may have been able to have done to save the deal.

A strategy I am looking at is; using a lease option and using the "deposit" to pay the arrears. Pace Morby mentioned it as a side comment in one of his podcasts but he didn't really dive into it. My intent is just to give me enough time to get the property purchased properly by either sub to or hard money. Has anyone else done this before? I haven't been able to find anything in the forums, and not many attorneys in the area are willing to do any kind of creative deals in my part of North Carolina and the ones that do creative deals expect the investor to structure it and bring it to them under contract. Are there any concerns, or things to be aware of? I have never been on the buying end of a lease option, it seems relatively straightforward so long as I am making payments direct to the lender through a servicing company after I pay the arrears. Thank you in advance for any advice.