buying flat for student daughter at Uni - Scotla

cautious_mum

Hi Dimbo61,
We're expecting 8 - 12 years for the flat, which is longer than we've lived in any of our 'main residences' and the flat we looked at last week was parents selling after 8 years and that is under offer already. So no problems there. Students rent 'unfurnished' as well, which is the way we would go if we were renting to non-students, we'd only furnish this as it's our daughter.. As for things like the boiler breaking down, we have Skype for her to do anything that I would do, and would use a boiler repair person! Plus we've already been down for the day. So these are all things we have considered.
Besides we will have probably sold our main residence by then to 'downsize' so it may end up with us 2 living there! Oh and we have good friends we could bribe with wine, who live in Edinburgh and work in Glasgow, so they could potentially help out if there are any problems.!

Andypandyboy

We had decided to go for it and were actively looking when our offspring said that they were looking to keep the group togehter for next year. We could have insisted but....Then he is on a course with an industrial placement, which could be anywhere so another issue to deal with.

We also have older children (who went to different universities) and we kept saying we should have done it before, The reality is that we thought the hardest part would be finding and funding the property when we discovered that might be the easy part!

If the flat is somewhere you could rent as a holiday let or would use personally that is great, but in our case it is 30 miles down the road in a city we love, but which is not exactly a holiday destination.

Our current thinking is to buy a smaller house in a street where we could live if we ever decided to downsize (that is a pretty narrow area so it gives us issues with the plan from the outset) and rent that out. The return would not be so good, but it is a solution. Additionally, it could be a starter house for youngest son if he ever wanted to buy it off us.

Then there was the idea of a holiday let abroad but that has its own problems.....

cautious_mum

Hi Andypandyboy


I think we're just on a different part of the same circle as you! Except we started with the 'smaller place down the street' as a downsizing property/to retire too, but then realised we wanted something a bit bigger than we could afford. so it would have to be investment /rental only instead. Which is fine, but what if we moved away in the meantime? (always possible with the way work goes these days, happened before) much harder to look after, if that is part of maximising the return.
Plus the oil industry problem, etc.
So we could get a straightforward holiday place..... Problem then that the holiday places are expensive in England, so we'd need much bigger mortgage. hummmm, Plus we don't need a 'countryside' type place as we have that here, so it would need to be a contrast, ie city.
After much debate started looking in Edinburgh, flats too grotty for the money.... unless we borrowed more... so left it
went back to the 'local place to rent out' idea, even looked and went into finance, then veered to 'somewhere other side of Scotland as holiday place'
then gave up! Decided to decide when girls started Uni,
So that gets us here!!!


A holiday let abroad sounds great but I've heard too many horror stories about places like spain and the different legal systems.... so yes, that's a different ball game.


Good luck! maybe broaden the search to a bit further down the road (but not too far?) just a thought.
I hope we both get there (where-ever 'there' is!)