Buying House for Children

xylophone

You don't know where your son's career may take him after university.

Had he considered a lifetime ISA to which you can contribute the maximum amount each year until he wants to buy a house?

It would be better not to tie any gift to him to one to your daughter.

If you gifted your daughter a deposit now, could she afford a mortgage to buy a one bedroom flat?

agrinnall

I'm failing to see how your son benefits from this in any way other then perhaps a temporary free place to live at some point in the future, should he want to move in with his sister. Obviously it's up to you what you do with your money but don't try to kid yourself that you are treating your children equally by doing this.

Keep_pedalling

GBP wrote: »

Thanks everyone for bringing me up to speed so fast.

So can I ask a further couple of questions:

1) It seems that it might be sensible for me to remortgage my current property and then gift each of my children a very large deposit to make affording a house a reality - I can pay the remortgage off with my lump sum in 8 years depending on how much I gift them

2) i realise that this has inheritance implications but imagine we will live more than 7 years and/or we will be leaving a good inheritance that tax on extra won't be an issue

3) Our concern about doing this is a reflection on current world in which our children may purchase a home using a large deposit from us and then separate and they then lose large amount of money if house split between couple and our large deposit to them is divided... realise it sounds strange, but if that were to happen within a few years, it would be award. I hear that there is an increasing use of pre-nuptials, so imagine that might be the way forward but perhaps gifting child deposit and then saying that this must be in pre-nuptial sounds dreadful, but if one is talking of 100-150K deposit, it's not a small amount

A gift is not really a gift, if you still want to control what happens to it in the future. Your children are adults, so once you have given them that step up in life the rest is up to them. If they end up in a messy divorse, or developed a serious drug or gambling addiction and blow the lot it is entirely down to them.

We have gifted both our children substancial deposits to buy their first houses, which in reality meant gifting to them and their partners (now spouses) but I think you have to have a bit of faith in your children and the choices that make.