Brainstorm- Best way to help as a parent

DotingDad

If anybody is interested I ended up gifting a sum to my child and she is now a property owner.

Time will tell as to how it all pans out but hopefully I've done what I reasonably can to help give them a good start.

seven-day-weekend

DotingDad wrote: »

If anybody is interested I ended up gifting a sum to my child and she is now a property owner.

Time will tell as to how it all pans out but hopefully I've done what I reasonably can to help give them a good start.

Of course you did, so did we. Any parent who could, would.

I hope both our children have many happy years in their properties!

motherofstudents

Thanks for getting back, it's always nice to hear how things turn out.

bitsandpieces

poppysarah wrote: »

Renting isn't dead money - and it enables people who can't afford to buy a house to have somewhere to live.

And renting lets people who could buy - but for whom it's not the best financial/lifestyle choice - have somewhere to live. If someone is likely to need to move fairly regularly, costs of buying and selling (in money and time) are significant, and you end up speculating on property prices in given areas in the fairly short term. There's at least as good an argument that mortgage interest - and the costs/charges of buying and selling and borrowing - are dead money.

Owning a place does provide more stability of tenure, of course - so long as you can pay the mortgage - which has real benefits. Historically, property has been a decent investment in the medium term, though the economy is weird at the moment and who knows what the future will bring.