Family as a landlord/tenant relationship?

marking_bad

Is this advised for or against, or does it depend on circumstances?

sonastin

Depends on the circumstances and the relationships. Bear in mind that if there is a problem with the landlord/tenant relationship it will have an effect on the family relationship. Landlord/tenant arrangement is business and mixing business and family is risky.

Also need to consider the implications of "contrived tenancy" on benefits positions, etc if it ever came to that.

mostlycheerful

Well, yes, there’s pros and cons.

The upside is that you should generally be safer with family than with strangers. Well, depending on what the family member is like. Obviously, if they’re good then it’ll likely be good but if they’re unreliable or negative in any way then possibly not.

Also it’s good to help your family rather than strangers.

The downside is that if it goes wrong then you can spoil an otherwise solid relationship. Which would be a shame and could have been avoided if you’d simply done the business with strangers. Shame to lose a good family relationship over a small bit of business. Traditionally doing business with family or friends is often seen as being to be avoided as necessarily the business will strain the relationships in one way or another. Family may expect more generous terms than strangers. You may feel that you can’t evict family or hassle them to pay the rent on time or not have parties and trash the place and annoy the neighbours or such like. You may feel that you can’t impose conditions on them that you want to whereas with strangers you’ll have more of a free hand to do the business the way you want. Which if it comes to eviction for any reason such as you wanting to sell up or charge more rent or such like could make all the difference.

So perhaps only do this with family if you have a lot of other much bigger interests that eclipse this and so that this wouldn’t matter at all however it goes. But if this is important to you financially or emotionally then maybe it would be safer to do it with strangers.