I think I would actually go the other way and consider what the OP is suggesting to buy the house on BTL basis.

Once the house is sold it is sold and there is no going back to it, the money gets spent and the story will play out as it needs to and the relationship will last or it won't.

If the house was kept as a buy to let (and yes your mother can gift you the equity for deposit) then the house can then be rented which can cover the money raised for her mum. The rental should be sufficient to pay the rental and any other mauintainance matters and may even produce a little profit if you are lucky. The other upside to this is that while tghe house is being rented it will (over the next few years) gain more in value as the houseing market slowly returns back to normal meaning that if the house was thehn sold at a later date it will hopefully be worth £100k, £120k, £200k.

Selling a house in the current market is a hard thing to do, there are so many people trtying to sell that the market is effectively flooded and everyone is fighting each other to get the lowest price and quickest sale, on top of this, if the house is only worth £80k then I will assume it is a terraced house of siome kind and unfortunately the most common repossession house type at present is terraced which means there are likely a few houses in the area selling for £40 - £50 through repossession and any home buyer is going to look at these first. All of these elements will drop the house price and whereby you may think that £80k is a realistic price for the house it does not bear what the market will pay for it and you may find that you have to market at closer to £70k for anyone to have a food interest in the house.

I would speak to your mum and see if she would be happy for you to buy the house if she will gift the deposit. She gets her money, you get a house and an investment that should pay for itself and will increase in value in the next 5/10/15/20 years.

If she agrees to this then I would suggest that you go and speak to a mortgage broker and see what is available on the market. You will need at least a 25% deposit, a joint or single income of £20k - £25k (minimum level for lenders to accept BTL).

Good Luck

Sell, move in with her man, legally draw up a contaract against her cash input to new property, job done.

She will have to drop the selling price, it's the way things are at the moment.

You may be worrying more than she is, she is an adult!

Smudger

Hi all,

Really hoping someone can help/offer some sound advice.

My mother is struggling to sell her house due to current financial times, she wants to sell to move in and live with her partner.

Now I'm worried about her selling the house below its true value (or at least true value in a decent market), she has already dropped 15% off her advertised price and obviously it is likely that she will take even more than that off by the time she gets an offer.

I've tried to get her to think about renting the place until the markets are better or even getting a small mortgage as she wants to get her hands on £20-£50k to help do up her partners place.

Now I see this all as being high risk and not leaving her in a good place financially, as one, they are not married yet and therefore she should not be spending her money on his place. Two, she will be due for retirement in the next 5 years or so and we all know state pension is awful so this would help her with income at that point. And, three, what if everything goes pear shaped between them, she will have no house, limited capital in the bank as it will to some degree have been spent and as she doesn't work due to ill health her income will be non-existant.

I can't seem to talk any sense into her so would really like to try and help and offer a safety net of some kind. I have been considering offering her the current advertised value for her house and will then take it on as a buy to let. The only problem with this is I do not have a deposit and would need to use the rental income to pay the mortgage, so I was hoping that I could get her to agree a loan to me or gift some of the value of the property that I could use as collateral. The house value is only £80k so well below inheritance tax levels. Then should anything go wrong, if it was a loan we scrap that and she could take back a percentage of the property and even move back to her house.

I'm just not sure of the legal implications, tax implications, or anything else for that matter.

Anyone have any sensible advice? Otherwise I might just have to stand back and try to pick up the pieces should it all go wrong (hope it doesn't, but I personally always like a back up plan).