Inherited half of a house

Wizardry

A friend of mine has been living in a house with her mother for 5 years and her mother has recently died leaving the house to her and her brother (50/50).

Her brother is demanding she sell the house so that he can get to his share of the property.

If the house is sold, my friend will have nowhere to live. What are her options?, I think she would like to stay if she could.

Help would be greatly appreciated.:huh:

Debt_Free_Chick

If she wants to stay all she can do is to buy her brother's share from him. So ...

1. She and he will need to agree on value. Get three EAs around to value it and take the average. Better still, put it on the market and see what offers come in. She can then "beat" the best offer - or simply match it, if the brother accepts that.
2. She will need to be sure that she can get a mortgage to pay her brother his share, unless she has savings to pay him off.

If I were her, I'd get some EAs to give me an idea of the value and then start to make some enquiries with a whole-of-market mortgage broker to see what mortgage I could get - assuming, that is, that I wanted to stay there.

Her other option is to sell and use her share of the sale proceeds to buy another, different place. Or rent?

Does she work and/or have an income?

How old is she (roughly)?

bandraoi

The other option, depending on what the brother wants would be for her to work out a fair rental value and pay her brother half the rent for the house.

poppysarah

She should go and have a free half hour with a solicitor to check her exact legal position.

Debt_Free_Chick

bandraoi wrote: »

The other option, depending on what the brother wants would be for her to work out a fair rental value and pay her brother half the rent for the house.

That's a good point and should be what's happening anyway - that's what he's entitled to, as a minimum. She is effectively occupying his share of the property so he's due rent.

Depends what he wants really. If he's after the capital, then paying rent might not be enough to pacify him.

Mutton_Geoff

Get three EAs around to value it and take the average

Make sure you ask them all for a "forced sale" valuation and pick the lowest. Anyone who suggests otherwise clearly isn't in the market at the moment. Wizardry's friend's brother needs to be very realistic about what can be achieved right now.