Help please

Firefox1975

The £150k sounds like a mortgage they received from a bank.

so they are currently paying that,their rent on their own home + £150 towards the mortgage on the undesireable property with bad neighbours.

OP - sell your parents house, use the 50k to pay off the negative equity in the undesireable property, sell the undesireable property and you will have more than enough deposit to put down on another house for your parents.

Don;t come back and tell me that your parents dont wish to move - that's unfortunate, but sacrifices have to be made

and where is the other £70k? or was a it a Lamborghini you bought?

marybelle01

Firefox1975 wrote: »

The £150k sounds like a mortgage they received from a bank.

so they are currently paying that,their rent on their own home + £150 towards the mortgage on the undesireable property with bad neighbours.

OP - sell your parents house, use the 50k to pay off the negative equity in the undesireable property, sell the undesireable property and you will have more than enough deposit to put down on another house for your parents.

Don;t come back and tell me that your parents dont wish to move - that's unfortunate, but sacrifices have to be made

and where is the other £70k? or was a it a Lamborghini you bought?

That's what I thought. OP, with the best will in the world, you don't want housing benefit or anyone else poking through your affairs. Because albeit that if you had dishonest intentions I doubt you would have posted here, but oh boy, are there some seriously questionable things going on which official bodies might find, well, honestly - criminal.

Starting with the fact that you appear to have claimed a mortgage to buy a property for £150,000, which you then proceeded to pay a lesser amount for and kept the balance for your own personal use. I don't think you'll find a mortgage is actually supposed to be used like that, and lenders might just call that fraud.

Far worse - and I am not saying you did this but I can perfectly see what would be a conclusion to be investigated if this came to my attention at work - you bought a house from your parents for a fraction of its value, and paid them even less than the agreed sale price, and you did this when your father was in a mentally unstable state (evidenced by a suicide attempt). Do you not see how that would look? Especially when there were other options, such as your parents selling the house for its full value then paying off their debts and still having enough money left to buy a smaller, less costly, home.

I am thinking that this is a whole series of poor judgements that you really don't want scrutinizing lest someone decide that they were not poor judgements at all.

BigAunty

The OP needs to investigate 'contrived tenancy' whereby the local council will refuse to pay housing benefit to a tenant who is closely related to their landlord who lives elsewhere. If the local council believe that it's been set up to take advantage of the housing benefit system, not set up as a commercial tenancy, then they will reject the claim. For example, they would want to see a proper tenancy agreement in place.

The OP needs to google deprivation of capital and notional capital. If a claimant applies for a means tested benefit and it is discovered that they have given away or mis-spent their capital in order to intentionally qualify for it (note the intentional/deliberate nature of the act), then the claimant will be treated as if they still own it. This rule is to discourage claimants from gifting their savings, investments and properties to friends and relatives in order to come under the thresholds of capital so they can claim benefits rather than supporting themselves with their own money.

Try to find the DWP decision makers guides on Deprivation of Capital - these are the staff manuals which explain how they investigate claimants who once had means but seem to have given them/spent them unecessarily.

The OP has already identified the 5 year rule whereby the previous owner of a property cannot then suddenly become a tenant and then get HB for it. There is a recent thread on this forum of someone whose parents have been rejected for HB for this same regulation, so it is in active use. Also, there have been previous threads before where HB claims have been rejected when a claimant has lived rent free for a while and then puts in a HB claim, presumably they think it is contrived, non-commercial or a liability has been set up artificially when there was never any previous liability.

Here is a link to DWP guidance including the following info

Commercial basis

You cannot claim HB if the tenancy or other agreement is not on a commercial basis.

Previous owner

You cannot claim HB if you or your partner previously owned the dwelling which you now rent, unless you could not continue to live in the property without the transfer of ownership.

http://www.dwp.gov.uk/publications/specialist-guides/technical-guidance/rr2-a-guide-to-housing-benefit/housing-benefit/

I suggest to the OP that they get their MP involved if they don't believe the local council/DWP are processing the HB claim in the way they think it should be processed.

princessdon

Of course this is a contrived tennancy

They have been living there rent free (whilst they had the remainder of their savings), and NOW you want to charge them (well us the taxpayers).

If your parents had been paying you rent (market value), you had a tennancy agreeemnt, you treat them the same as your other BTL tennants, the house had insurance, you declared it on your tax returns etc etc then you *may* have stood a chance.

To allow them 5 years free of charge with no agreement then decide you need the govt to pay is always going to be questioned.