Splitting up with girlfriend joing mortgage advice

surreybased

I think you will need some information to ensure that you can proceed.
Do you have a mortgage balance staetment - what money is left outstanding on the mortgage? Is it interest only or have you been repaying the capital? i.e is the balance £75k-10k deposit, less any repayments you have made to the loan in the last 18 months.

Once you know how much you still owe on the mortgage it would be good to get a valuation on the property, at best the house is likely to be worth £75k but you could verify this with an estate agent.

Then you will need to know if your salary can take on the £75k loan by yourself. i.e will the mortgage company believe that you earn enough, on your single salary, to pay it back each month.

Once you know what money is outstanding and what the house is worth today you can work out if you owe your ex any money. I think it's unlikely as most houses don't increase in value in the first year or so.She may have to consider that she effectively rented the house for 18 months.

Once you know a little more you can see if the mortgage company will allow you to mortgage on your own. Do you know what interest rate you pay today?

mrpootle830

It's a joint mortgage therefore I presume she's paid into the upkeep of the home / mortgage whilst living together?

It's likely that you'll need to get a current valuation for the house.

I forsee several scenario's depending on how amicable the break up is, for this example we'll imagine that the house has increased in value to 90k

1. She signs over the home, no complaints and the bank lets you remortgage in your name and that's that.
2. She signs over the home and you give her 50% of the new equity of 15k (90k - 75k / 2 = 7.5k)
3. She signs over the home and she insists on 50% of all the equity which would include therefore 10k deposit you paid (90k - 65k / 2 = 12.5k)

For examples 2 & 3, you could be faced with the situation you can't remortgage and have to sell, bear in mind if you get a remortgage you will have to stump up the cash to buy her out and pay legal fee's to remover her from the mortgage / deeds.

If it all goes horribly wrong i'm no expert in what a court would say but I'm in no doubt a judge would ask himself why have you got a joint mortgage if you're not saying your equally entitled 50/50 to the house and it might be that you have to give up 5k of your deposit money.

Just my thoughts

caeler

The fact that you are willing to keep the property and take on it's liability it benefit enough to your girlf. She put nothing in and house prices haven't rose. Basically the benefit to her is you are prepared to release her from the liability and allowing her to move on. Alternatively you could put the house on the market, sell for what you paid, you take out £10K which you may or may not make out of the profit, she owes you the profit and any joint debt left selling the property and solicitors fees. I'm sure if you describe that situation to her she'd be happy to take out her interest in the property!

suburbanwifey

Before its worth asking her if she would be willing to sign everything over to you, you need to find out exactly how much you owe (current balance outstanding) and then find out if the mortgage lender would lend you what is owed on your sole salary. Do that first, because if they won't allow it, your only option will be to sell the house.

Then get 2 valuations as I have suggested before to get an idea of what your particular house is worth (is should be worth more than the one you quoted as there is an extra bedroom)

Then come back with that info and we can all advise further. Try not to get too stressed about it all, there is always a solution to most problems and the fact that you are on friendly terms should mean you can do all this amicably.

Kelzabells

I was in this situation in the mid 90's.

My boyfriend paid the 5k deposit, and when we sold 2 years later, I allowed him to take that back out of the equity we made. After the fees were taken, I walked out with £700. I look back and know I could have argued that 2.5k of that was legally entitled to me, but he saved hard for it! We wouldn't have been able to buy a place together if he didn't have it, and it wasn't all bad - it was good in the early days, so I let it go.

I hope your Girlfriend will see that too.

Good luck.

wannabehermit

It doesn't matter how much she put in or you put in at the start unless you specified those amounts in writing. If the deposit went down as joint interest then I'm afraid you are going to owe her her half of it (or whatever the equity is in the house now). If you put it down as sole interest in your name only then you owe her nothing. Sorry, been there, done that, got screwed for nearly £40K because I was too naive to put it in sole interest.