Renting as power of attorney.

Poet100

My sister and I are thinking of renting our fathers house to his grandchildren (teenage students) with the purpose of providing housing for family members and at the same time earning money for our fathers care costs, At the moment the property is empty so it seems to make sense.
Our main stumbling block is, how do we pay tax, we have power of attorney for my father, if we are to keep it all above board, do we register in my fathers name and fill in a tax return form as acting for our father, are we allowed to do this? I don't see why not, but I am not sure. Any advice welcome.

davidmcn

Yes, you do everything he would need to do, and the POA gives you authority to do so. Not sure of mechanics for dealing with HMRC as an attorney but I'm sure they're used to it.

Cakeguts

It will end in disaster. The don't rent to family or friends advice is particularly important here because if something goes wrong you will create a lot of ill feeling and you may not be able to pay for your father's care.

G_M

When acting as POA, you 'ARE' your father.

If he needs to declare tax, you fill in the form for him, sign for him, and pay the tax for him.

However, bear in mind that in acting for him under a POA you have a legal obligation to act in his best interests.

Renting to teenagers may not be in his best interests.
And renting to family may not be in his best interests.
Combine the two, and you need to consider carefully......

Is there a mortgage on the property? If so, implications on renting, and implications on relative tenants.

More here:

* New landlords: advice, information & links

Poet100

The property is mortgage free, being teenagers is irrelevant (one is early 20s) and renting to family or strangers is also irrelevant, I would say there is more stability in renting to trusted family members, who we know, will not fail on keeping up payments and will look after the property, trusted so much that we would waiver the deposit.

Cakeguts

Poet100 wrote: »

The property is mortgage free, being teenagers is irrelevant (one is early 20s) and renting to family or strangers is also irrelevant, I would say there is more stability in renting to trusted family members, who we know, will not fail on keeping up payments and will look after the property, trusted so much that we would waiver the deposit.

What will you do if the relatives who are the tenants are unable to pay the rent? Made redundant? Illness? These relatives are unlikely to be able to claim benefits to help with the rent so what are you going to do to pay your father's care if the rent is not paid?

Poet100

There are provisions in place, besides why would they be unable to claim benefits?, they would after all be in the same position as anyone else, and entitled, although I do agree, under this god forsaken government, they would struggle to find social responsibility from an ideology based on making poor people pay for a collapsed economy caused by greed. We are confident that these highly educated people will be finding employment (one already has a part time job). Even if that happened, it would have been our fathers wish to look out for his grandchildren, whatever.
This is not the typical greedy landlord situation we are talking about here, this is a possible solution to helping two sets of people, the intention is not to capitalise on the needs of people who need housing because of lack of social housing investment, it is to provide them with somewhere to live whilst also addressing another problem caused by greed and almost non existing government social responsibility.

getmore4less

typically in this situation(student type lets) landlords ask for guarantees from the parents.

With your POA hat on you could do this as it would be in the best interests of your father to take reasonable steps to protect the income stream.

it would also make sense that any letting to non family members is done as lodgers(excluded occupiers) of the main tenants(family).

The obvious back question is why not sell the place?

Apodemus

When we were in this situation grand-daughter lived in grandparents' house rent-free. They would have been mortified at the thought of charging any member of their own family for staying in the family home. Admittedly we were in the fortunate position of the care costs being covered by pension and savings, so no risks of "deprivation of assets". Also no tax implications.

p00hsticks

Poet100 wrote: »

There are provisions in place, besides why would they be unable to claim benefits?, they would after all be in the same position as anyone else,

Generally, Housing Benefit is not usually available for those living in property owned by relatives ( it would be far too open to abuse). No reason why the couldn't claim other benefits such as Jobseekers Allowance.

When_the_going_gets_tough

I would check that. I don't think grandfather would be a problem provided it's a commercial arrangement. And I agree with the op renting to family can be a win win situation