Messy break up house involved!!

suzieg182003

Hi everyone,

I have been looking all over for some help on my situation for a while but don't feel any better informed than I did a year ago so I am hoping someone on here can help. (Bit of a long story)

Me and my ex fiance split up in October 2009. We bought our property together 3 and a half years ago. When he left me, he left the house and me to deal with it all. I started paying our £700 mortgage by myself, he refused me any help as he said I was living there so I should pay it, even though I wasn't given any choice in the matter. He has since married someone else and has a baby.

We looked at putting the house up for sale but when we bought it we got a 100% mortgage and the house isn't worth anything more than we paid for it so we would probably end up making a loss!

I now really want to be out of the property (I want to move back home for a while) so I am considering putting it up for rent until the property market picks up and it can be sold!

My ex agreed to pay for any repairs that need to be done in order to put it up for rent (no more than £1500 worth) which I thought was the least he could do as I have been paying the mortgage for over a year on my own. I would pay it myself but I am so stretched with my outgoings I litterally cannot afford it. But after a few weeks changed his mind and said I should just hand the keys into the bank and let them repossess it because he can't be bothered with it anymore. I have refused to do this!

I can just about afford to keep living there and my parents may help for me to do the repairs in order for it to be put up for rent but I don't want him to be entitled to anything when it finally does sell!

I cannot get him off the mortgage but I wondered if it is possible to get him off the deeds? And would this mean he is entitled to nothing when I sell??

Any advice would be greatly appreciaed!

Thanks

getmore4less

Sell for what you can get,

It will be the only way to seperate your finances.


Going down te rental route requires consent to let from the lender and the Ex.

Do you understand what letting the place involves?

You might be better/easier with lodgers if there is space.

Credit_Jake

If the house isn't worth much more than what you paid for it and considering you took out a 100% mortgage, your ex will probably get next to nothing anyway. I would sell, cut your losses and move on.

opinions4u

I am considering putting it up for rent until the property market picks up

When will that happen? What will make that happen?

I would suggest that with public sector job-losses and mortgage lenders reducing their reliance on wholesale funding any noticeable improvement in the housing market is at least 3 years off. Probably longer.

Do you really want to be joint landlord with your ex for that long?

Senior_Paper_Monitor

At 100%ish LTV you are most unlikley to get lender's permission to rent.

You cannot 'come off the deeds' and 'remain on the mortgage' (or vice versa) and I suspect there is no way the lender will release him.

GM4L's options (sell or lodgers) seem eminently sensible.

tubster

Unless you can get your mortgage lender and ex to sign over the mortgage to you (and you would have to demonstrate to the lender that you have the income to serve the whole mortgage, unless you go for a more expensive buy to let mortgage) I think getmore4less is right - you are now considering throwing other people's money at a property you don't own, in a property market that may well go down, not up if you consider the legion of redundancies that will coming in the next few months. And how much to actually expect to make on rental once you take the repairs and mortgage into account, and divided the profit by two? And what happens when the boiler breaks down - are you looking forward to negotiating with him every time you need to spend some money on the house?
I think you need to reconfigure how you think of the money you have paid on your mortgage so far - if you can get what you paid for the house you have paid a pretty good rent for a few years, and that is that - try not to dwell on the 'loss' you have made - you had a roof over your head which if you were renting would be worth a lot.
I would talk to your ex about whether he wants to put some money into doing the bare minimum to make the property more attractive to a buyer, or get him to cover most or all of the selling costs and legal fees - you might want to ask an estate agent to give you a valuation and some advice on this. And if by any chance you do make a little, negotiate with your ex to get a little back on the mortgage payments you have made on his behalf - show him where he signed the agreement saying he was responsible for half the debt with the bank.
All in all you might be better to get shot of the house and get on with making a new start, rather than entering into a business relationship with your ex.

suzieg182003

I am not looking at making any money off the rental, just covering the mortgage will be fine with me.

The reason I don't want to sell in the current climate is because if I do make a loss he is that unreasonable he will probably leave me to pay for it all on my own, which I don't think that is very fair considering he put me in this situation and not the other way round.

Tubster, your comment about looking at how much I have paid since we have split. For one £700 per month is not a reasonable rent in Manchester unless your living in a city centre apartment, which I certainly am not, and your forgetting that we jointly entered this mortgage together I had no choice other than to stay at the property when he left otherwise it would have been repossessed a long time ago.