Gifted Deposit

Regina.filangie

My partner's parents are giving us £15,000 to help us buy our first house, £9k of which will form the deposit and the rest will be used for renovations. They don't want this money back.
When we spoke to our broker and told her this she just said 'OK' - no mention that a letter from them will be required stating they have no interest in owning a share of the property. Am I right in thinking they will need to do this?

Can't they just put the money into our savings or bank account and we can pay the deposit from there?


Thanks

Thrugelmir

There is no issue with being gifted a deposit. So easiest for them to provide a letter to your partner confirming that it is an outright gift.

This way you'll avoid any issues relating to the deposit when obtaining your mortgage.

You can provide the letter to your conveyancing solicitor at the outset.

Pupnik

Yes, it is the solicitors who will want the letter rather tan the broker- you may as well move things along and provide it right away, otherwise they will contact you and ask you to declare any deposit money that is not from your savings. It shouldn't be a problem.

maurice28

What everyone else said really. When my girlfriend and I bought our house last year, both sets of parents gifted us a few thousand pounds to go towards the deposit. They just basically had to sign a form from the lender saying they did not expect the money back or have an interest in the property. I wouldn't worry about it.

Senior_Paper_Monitor

Do NOT pass it through your account "to save them the hassle" - it will then appear to be a gift of a deposit from a resident in the property and the whole thing may fall over !

Most lenders are happy with a simple assurance on source of gifted deposit as part of the application and supported by bank statements etc - BUT they (or subsequently the solicitors) can demand the letter of comfort, so we tend to obtain it up front and send it in anyway (to avoid potential delays later in the process - the issue being that a subsequent document request tends to put the application back into the admin queue for a few days) although I guess its only been demanded on 10% of the gifted depsoit cases we have handled this year.