Parental ' house gift'

trailingspouse wrote: »

All of us struggled to afford our first home. Working together to achieve something independently of your parents is part of making a life with someone and entering the grown-up world.

Let them do it on their own. If they come to you desperate for help with a deposit or some such, then you can (carefully) get involved. But until then, leave them be.

I am amazed at the ignorance of some people who have no bloody idea how easy it was a generation or two ago to fall on your face in the muck of life in the UK and somehow always come up smelling of roses!

Just take a look at the change in average first time buyer age over the past three decades, especially in London.

Young people are paid far too little now for far too long at the start of their careers. They do not have sufficient disposable income to save substantial deposits (and nor did earlier generations but we got high LTV mortgages liberally spread upon us anyway). The average house prices in 2017 are astounding, and so are rents incurred by youngsters whilst trying to save a deposit.

We weren't cleverer or smarter. We simply took too much out of the system, pulled up the drawbridge and are rather ignorantly waving from the battlements and shouting about how to build ladders rather than providing them.

The only way the economy can be rebalanced in practice at the moment to ensure young people get on the housing ladder is for families to operate as families and give the poor youngsters a leg up (and quite obviously 'family' doesn't include the first boyfriend or girlfriend or two who come along and want to shack up).

So I understand the OP's question perfectly. It is very sensible.

It's bad enough our young people being saddled with student debt, let alone having the added risk of a shacking-up relationship suddenly becoming as financially burdensome as a celebrity divorce.

The OP is correct to use the word gift. When you give someone a gift, you do not expect them to immediately give it to someone else. In fact in most cultures, including ours, it's rude to do that. It's even ruder for an outsider to say I'm leaving but I'm taking half of it, but rudeness seems the norm these days when it comes to easy money.

I have kids also in their 20s whom I'd like to help in a similar way to the OP if they need it in a year or two.

I'd be interested in learning as much as possible about how to help without the family entering into stupid risks arising from typical shackings up in 2017.