buy a house, rent back to mother on job seekers!

Catblue

Things are just a bit messy at the moment, aren't they? Nobody's fault of course but just the way things are. It just doesn't seem that the time is right for you to take this on.

My advice would be for your partner to extricate herself financially from the ex as a first step. When that is done, then you can both sit down and consider the best way forward. Your partner may well want a "fresh start" away from the marital home so it might be easier to sell the current house and you two buy a new one together.

Help your mum find somewhere nice to rent in the meantime and then talk about it again next year when things are a lot more clear financially.

BitterAndTwisted

Find out what a BLT mortgage will cost in repayments and what the maximum rent you could receive will be. Ensure that the numbers stack up and that your partner would be happy to see you enter into this kind of arrangement. I love my family but I would never in a million years buy a property for them to pay the rent via LHA. It's far too risky.

Would your mother even qualify for JSA or any other benefits having spent the last six months out of the country not paying UK tax and NI? Have you looked into that yet?

Be a guarantor if you feel compelled to help put a roof over her and her child's head. Even then you could find yourself saddled with paying six month's rent for her. Paying a deposit and up to three month's rent in advance would put a bit of dent in your savings in any case, depending on what the rental market is like where you are.

Jowo_2

Yes, you can legitimately rent a property to a close relative who receives LHA, so long as it isn't deemed to be a contrived tenancy set up on purpose to take advantage of the benefit system (for example, by charging her rent when your mother is on benefits and letting her live there free when she's in employment). At the very least, it has to be a proper commercial arrangement with an AST in place.

But landlord/tenant relations are always riskier when personal relationships are involved. At the end of the day, you may have to evict your own mother if she gets behind on the rent in the future or you have financial difficulties and need to sell up....

Batchy

Ok, please do not bad mouth poor mother, I encouraged her to get off benefits 8 years ago, give up the beautiful housing association house which we lived in for 24 years, to move into a pub and work 16 hours a day. She is a victim of the recession unfortunately. She never had the money to start it all off, but managed, but due to commitments and not enough income over the last years, and being a victim of employee theft (money etc) and red tape everywhere incurring high costs, it all got too much, and she lost everything.

Thanks for your advice guys I really appreciate it all! Part of me doesnt have a problem being guarantor, but part of me says that could be a difficult in the future.

My gf, I think does need to sort things out with ex, but in the mean time, i'll keep a low profile, all happy days at the moment. Except for poor mom. Im sure she will be able to sort things out eventually to her satisfaction.

Batchy

BitterAndTwisted wrote: »

Would your mother even qualify for JSA or any other benefits having spent the last six months out of the country not paying UK tax and NI? Have you looked into that yet?

I think it is complicated, but the fact is she never sold up and moved out, it was liquidated and repossessed by the brewery, she had no where to go but to follow partner at the time, now she is back in the UK, without a penny to her name.

They are processing applications, obviously if / when she does qualify is when we will look into housing, as if your on JS, then I guess you qualify for LHA.

Fire_Fox

For both the lender and the council's satisfaction this needs to be a commercial tenancy, i.e. you would evict your mother if she was unable to pay the rent. Your comment about your mum not "being at the mercy of a private landlord" and your guilt over her giving up the housing association place makes me doubt this would be a commercial tenancy in all respects. There are plenty of professional landlords out there who would love a long term let from a mature lady and will take care of their tenants - we have several who post regularly on this board.