buying your council house

durkaldino

hi,
my grandad has rented his council house for 30 years and will be entitled to a massive discount if he was to buy the house. He wants me to buy the house whilst living with him so that i get the discount. Is this possible and if so what do i need to do? any help is much appreciated, a bit lost at the minute.....

Ken68

Hi durk....it will be in his name and he won't be able to sell it to you or give it to you for five years.

Pal

I believe (although you need to check with the council) that you can both jointly buy the property with your grandad as long as you have lived with him for at least a year. This may vary from council to council, so I suggest you ask them.


Also I think the resale restriction is normally three years, but again you should check with the council. Also it is not that the property cannot be sold, but that a proportion of the discount has to be repaid to the council if you do so.

aliasojo

Useful Right to Buy info here:

http://www.odpm.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1151285

juniper1

As long as you live in the property, there are lenders out there who will let you buy the property with your grandad without your being on the RTB papers. You will need to approach a mortgage adviser who will carry out a factfind & identify the best lender for you both. The age of your grandad is also important as there may be restrictions with some lenders on how long you can have the mortgage for. The other very important factor is income. Do you need to self-cert your income or can you prove yours & your grandad's income and do either of you have adverse credit or alot of debt as these sorts of things will reduce the number of lenders out there that will lend to you both.
The RTB process is quite lengthy as councils tend not to move very fast.

silvercar

Whilst hoping your grandad enjoys many years of good health, their are implications in owning your own home if you should ever need residential or nursing care. Rather than paying for your care, the local authority might require you to fund you care needs from the value in your home.

lynzpower

Also to ask whether you are currently on the tenancy agreement of the flat. If you are not, then make this a priority.

tigertiger_3

Hi...i a in a similar situation my grandmotherants us to buy her house...between a few of us we would be able to come up with the cash to buy it....how do we go about this? Does she buy it and then one of us become 50/50 on the deeds with her. any help appreciated thanks

juniper1

tiger - you'll have more difficulty than durk. He will be able to go onto the mortgage with his grandfather. If your family can get together and put up the cash to buy your grandmothers house, perhaps by raising funds on your own property then that would be a solution but you would not all be able to enter into a mortgage contract together. You would need to speak to a solicitor about the deeds thing. Likelihood is that the council won't agree to you all going onto the deeds. You need a good solicitor who is experienced in RTB purchases to advise you about this.

MikeLB

My own experience of this (based under Scottish Law so could be different under English) was that I had to go onto the tenancy agreement as a joint tenant with my father. There was no pre-determined time scale as to how long you had to be on it for, as long as it was prior to the application for the right to buy to the local authority.

The mortgage company (Halifax) would then only issue a mortgage in joint names even although I was the person buying the property. They did though put through my fathers details as name only, (ignored all finances etc) and also wrote a letter to that effect. Basically as it was joint title deeds, it had to be a joint mortgage to keep them happy. The whole mortgage offer was based only on my finances, with literally my fathers name tagged on as an afterthought.

I have just started the next step, 4 years later, of reverting the whole thing into my name only, so will be interesting to see what that throws up, as i suspect it will not be totally straight forward, though we have at least passed the 3 Year No Sale or pay back part of discount conditions!

tigertiger_3

thanks guys what we intend doing is raising the cash...then one of us go on the deeds with her....I know this is a trusting thing to do but we are very close family.