Buying my parents house - Advice please!

lulubella27

Hi there,

First of all, apologies for my ignorance but this is all very new to me. As first time buyers, my partner and I have been casually looking for a property, ideally our first family home, for a few weeks now and have come close, but are yet to find the 'perfect' home. I'm sure it's probably out there, but circumstances have provided another possibility.

My parents are separating and need to sell their house in order to go their separate ways. It is a lovely home, one we know has been well looked after and lovingly brought up to a very good standard (benefitting from a new kitchen and extension some years ago). It is not the three bedrooms we were originally looking at but since my dad put the extension in, I know that the foundations laid would support a second storey if we decided to go up in the future. Anyway, perhaps that is all irrelevant, but just to set the scene.

My parents and grandparents suggested my partner and I buy my parents house - kind of a win-win for all involved. They would benefit from a quick sale, and we would get a property we already love, that we know has been looked after, with neighbours we know and in a location we would like to live in. Legally, where do we stand? I have read numerous posts about tax implications etc but I don't think this applies to us as my parents just want to sell their house to go their separate ways? They wouldn't be offering us a substantial discount (bar the couple of thousand they would probably save from having to go through an estate agent) and we would pay for the property ourselves with a 10% deposit and mortgage, as was initially the idea when we started house hunting.

I also assume that if we use the same solicitors, things are likely to be more straight forward and perhaps a little swifter but since we rent at a reasonable price, time isn't as much as an issue for me and my partner. Does anyone have any advice to offer? And please, please do shout if i have missed anything glaringly obvious when it comes to the implications of buying property from a family member as I really do feel a little out of my comfort zone here.

Many thanks in advance.

Mgman1965

As its a straight sale as you would any house I can't see any problems.

You and your parents are not trying to dodge Inheritence tax or care home fees or other such scams/avoidances by trying to give it to you or sell it to you for a £1 so can't see anything coming back to bite you on the bum.

lulubella27

Thank you - I was hoping that would be the case. Quite the opposite, if anything we want to make sure they get a fair price so that they can both get sorted elsewhere.

Old_Git

We are selling a family home at the moment and both parties are using the same solicitors ,as both had been previous clients and the firm has more than one solicitor .

If its a one person solicitor I would suggest you look for another one .
Your parents may want to have two solicitors as they are separating .

SailorSam

I bought my Mums house, although in my case it was a little different. When my Mum died i sold my own house and 'bought' this. So it was only a case of getting in touch with the Land Registry ourselves and getting the names changed, there were no Solicitors fees involved. Of course there was no mortgage to worry about.
So it would be easy & cheap to change the names over, you wouldn't have to pay for the normal Searches etc, but presuming you're getting a mortgage you'd have to do more than i did.