Inheritance, buying a new house and selling wife's house - First Time buyer myself

LeahXL

**WE ARE GETTING MORTGAGE ADVICE HOWEVER LOOKING FOR ANYONE WHO HAS A SIMILAR EXPERIENCE**

This is a long one but hopefully I might be able to gain some ideas if someone else has been in this situation.

My relationship with money wasn't good when I was younger (my mums too was awful) and I ran up lots of debt.

Over the years I have paid back every single penny, paying the last installment to creditors in 2016.

I moved in to my (now wifes) house in 2013 and never got put on the mortgage until we were ready to do so.

Alongside this my salary has increased to a comfortable amount (always want more and together we live comfortably.

I now only have 1 credit card (which is used for work expenses which is £3,900 credit limit on) and I have a car on hire purchase as my salary includes car allowance.

My wife has a lot of debt from her ex, around £15k, mainly catalogues and a loan which her ex left her with paying back.

She does have the mortgage though and we pay back at least the minimum payment (dependent on how tight it is in the month).

However, my mum passed recently and her estate will be shared with me and my brother putting us in a very very different financial situation. Something we would never have thought possible and although I would happily give all the inheritance back for my Mum to be alive it is what she would have wanted for us and made possible for us.

We will be using this money to pay off all debts apart from the car as that is covered by the car allowance and will still have a good amount of money left over.

Once the debts were paid my salary on it's own would cover everything in our current house including savings and we could save every single penny of my wife's and still have enough money to do some lovely things to the house we are in now.

So here is the conundrum.

For about a year we have been talking about moving in to a bigger house closer to my wife's family and yesterday one came up in an ideal location.

With my Mums inheritance money (I have most of this in life insurance now but the house is yet to go on the market) I will have 25-30% deposit for the house.

We don't know whether it would be better to sell the house we live in (putting us in a chain but having more of a deposit to put down after the same of our house) or if I should just go for it as a first time buyer and add my wife on later.?

chanz4

Speak to a broker not enough info to say

silvercar

Either way you will need to sell a property to buy your dream house, so nothing is happening quickly.

Whether you count as a first time buyer will depend on whether your mum's will gave you a 50% share in her home or a 50% share of the proceeds of her estate. If it was the former, I think you can do a deed of variation on the will (with your brother's agreement) to change the will to give you the latter.