Definition
Buy and hold describes a buyer's intention to purchase a property and keep it for the long term, earning rental income while benefiting from appreciation and gradual loan paydown over the years. Buyers using this strategy focus heavily on location, achievable rent levels, and what it will cost to make the home safe and livable for tenants. From a seller's perspective, buy-and-hold buyers are often more flexible on condition than flippers, since they're comfortable making gradual improvements over time rather than needing everything renovated before they can resell quickly. They also tend to be flexible on closing timelines and are frequently comfortable buying homes with tenants already living in them. If you own a rental property you're ready to be done managing, a buy-and-hold buyer can be a good fit since the transition of tenants and leases is often simpler with them. Overall, this term mainly signals that your buyer plans to keep the property rather than resell it soon.
Example
Denise owns a rental duplex with tenants who have two years left on their lease, and she'd worried that selling would mean forcing her tenants out or dealing with a messy transition. A buy-and-hold buyer purchases the property with the tenants and leases in place, meaning Denise never has to notify anyone to move out or interrupt the rental income. During negotiations, the buyer asked mainly about the roof's age, the furnace's condition, and the tenants' payment history, showing much less interest in cosmetic details than a flip buyer might have. The closing takes three weeks and Denise simply assigns the existing leases over to the new owner as part of the sale. Her tenants received a letter about the new landlord a few days after closing, and their rent and lease terms stayed exactly the same, which was the smooth outcome Denise had hoped for.