Brought a house then broken up a month later. Help?

Netballgirl

Me and my partner were together 8 years and he proposed in May 2018, we then booked our wedding for June 2019. In the summer we looked at buying a house together. We then completed on this 225k house start of December 2018. He then changed and started acting mean to me. By start of January 2019 he broke up with me. He left and I'm left in the house. We've agreed he'll pay half the bills and mortgage until sorted.

Now we have a 200k joint mortgage, which neither of us want or can afford by ourselves, a house that was only for us both to live together in and doesn't benefit us individually. Issues include he selected a 5 year fixed mortgage which has a £8.5k early repayment fee if we sell. He selected a higher monthly repayment to make the mortgage period shorter and together we could afford individually it's hard. We'll have to pay £3k worth of solicitor and estate agent fees if we sell as well. And we've got to hope that someone pays the same as we did. All in all I'm not convinced I'd get much change from my £11k deposit.

I feel very hard done by as he didn't tell me before buying the house he was having doubts and wanted to break up and said he thought things would improve. I feel like this situation has been caused by him and I don't feel I should also lose my deposit because of his poor decision and not being up front with me. He's saying it's 50 50 and legally I've got no leg to stand on.

Please can anyone help me or give any advice?

00ec25

of course it is 50/50
you are both adults, you both made a decision to live and buy together
it didn't work out, that is life.
You are obviously bitter but that is no basis for trying to make the best of it. Yes I'm sure the house now has horrid associations for you, but at least it is you living there for now.
You should ask for help on the relationships board because in reality your housing situation has no "solution" other than making the best of the situation and making sure he carries on paying for a place he no longer lives in - I'll bet that clock will soon tick down to him walking away entirely if you play hard ball. remember, legally he is still entitled to half

Since you have not mentioned it, we'll take as read that neither of you signed a declaration of trust detailing what would happen if you split or needed to sell "early".

Tigsteroonie

How much deposit did he put in?

G_M

This is a property forum, not a councilling forum, but....

You need to put aside the blame game and focus on resolving this practically.

Neither of you wants or can afford, the house, so it needs to be sold. The costs associated with the sale should be covered by the sale itself, or if insufficient, then shared equally.

You need to accept that this is going to be a costly matter, emotionally and financially.

But the quicker it's dealt with the quicker you can start to re-build your life /lives.


One issue is likely to be that lenders don't like lending onproperties that have only been owned for 6 months or less, so any prospective buyers you find may have trouble getting a mortgage.

Netballgirl

I had no reason to not trust him in my eyes everything was great. Why would you buy a house with someone if you wasn't convinced you wanted to be with them. Literally the weeks after competing. If he'd done it the weeks before we wouldn't be looking at losing thousands of pounds. How is that fair?

elsien

What's fair and what the legal position is, are two different thing.

00ec25

Netballgirl wrote: »

How is that fair?

it isn't

now stop crying and work through your options
G_M has given you a starter ...

diggingdude

Netballgirl wrote: »

I had no reason to not trust him in my eyes everything was great. Why would you buy a house with someone if you wasn't convinced you wanted to be with them. Literally the weeks after competing. If he'd done it the weeks before we wouldn't be looking at losing thousands of pounds. How is that fair?

It's not fair and it is a scummy thing to do but that is life sorry

ACG

Sounds similar to what my best mate has recently gone through - although she also wanted some of his redundancy pay that he was due to receive in 3-4 months time. Tough few months ahead, but once all is done and dusted you will be free, just be thankful you were not married.

Assuming joint tenancy then you both own it 50/50 and hes right you would probably struggle to argue that you are entitled to anything more - it would no doubt cost you a bit in solicitors costs to try and win. You could appeal to his better nature, but sounds like that would be a waste of time also.

You will struggle to sell until June, purely because of most lenders criteria. You could potentially "port" some of the mortgage to a new property. The upside there is that it will save you in Early repayment charges, you may even both be able to port part each and that will reduce the ERCs down by a decent chunk. It would be worth speaking to the lender to find out if that is feasible.

robatwork

Ignoring all the emotion, as we can only see 1 side of the story here, he is paying the mortgage and half the bills on a place he isn't living in.

Would you prefer to have moved out and still be paying half?

It sounds more than reasonable of him, but I doubt he'll be happy doing it for long, you really need to sell up and split any costs or profit in proportion to the deposits you put in.

Slithery

Where did you bring the house to?

Netballgirl wrote:

I feel very hard done by as he didn't tell me before buying the house he was having doubts and wanted to break up and said he thought things would improve.

So there were obviously already relationship issues before this property was bought? In which case I'm afraid you didn't take enough independent legal advice before deciding to go through with the purchase and you don't have any comeback, half the costs/debt is yours. In fact you could be liable to have to pay him rent for the half of the property that he owns if you have exclusive occupation of it.