Options to help mother move

sghughes42

wilfred30 said:

Presumably, the problem is the fact that the bathroom is on a different floor to her bedroom.

Got it in one - thought that would be obvious but maybe not! Getting up in the middle of the night etc isn't great, especially with steep stairs.

sghughes42

Lover_of_Lycra said:

Why would mum give away half her equity to your sister? 

She's going to get it eventually, if we can find Mam somewhere secure now then no reason why not. It would help her (my sister) anyway as they could do with moving somewhere bigger - she has a child, we don't and are too old now.

sghughes42

wilfred30 said:

sghughes42 said:

House is only worth £60-70k (North East mining village...) but we seem to be looking at £150k+ for a decent bungalow in a better town in the same area. 

What size is the house she currently lives in?  Presumably it's a 2 or 3 bedroom as you and your sister presumably grew up there.  

Can she move to a 1 bed bungalow as, presumably, that wouldn't cost more than twice as much as her current house.  

It's a 3 bed terrace. There are a few bungalows in the area that are a similar value to the house, they are in much worse places though and typically have little or no garden. At least her current house has a bit of garden, which is a big point. She only just gave up her allotment last year, anything she moves to would need at least as much garden as she has now.

Edit: I should also say we really want her to be able to to move to somewhere a bit better. The place we grew up in went massively down hill when they closed the pit. No investment at all, no regeneration. Local council fills the social housing with people nowhere else will take. That's the main reason the house is valued so low. Used to be a great place to live, now it's awful.

Slithery

sghughes42 said:

She's going to get it eventually...

There is no way you could possibly know that. What if your mother ends up needing the equity to pay for care home fees?

sghughes42

saajan_12 said:

1) If you buy the house
...

2) If you buy jointly with mother
...

3) If mother buys the house outright with a loan from you 
...

Personally I would do (3) but only works IF there is enough equity in your own house and you can pass affordability. 

This actually covers a few comments, so in no particular order:

Remortgaging our house isn't an option at the moment as we are one year in to a five year deal. The penalty would be substantial. If we don't have a solution in four years then it's certainly something we'll explore, but I'd hope to do something before then.

As for does my wife agree and other related points, we are looking at this in two ways, first to help my mother and secondly as an investment. We can only pay so much off our existing mortgage and the interest rate is low anyway, savings interest is pretty much non-existent. We wouldn't charge rent unless we needed to as part of any BTL solution. We are, of course, assuming some increase in property value, at least enough to offset the interest we'd pay. I guess you can say help my mother to help us when we retire.

Moving her closer to or in with us isn't an option, we live 120 miles away and she'd want to stay or even move closer to my sister and nephew. Whether we could help them all move together.... sounds too complicated really. She's less than 15 miles from my sister now, it takes over two hours on the bus. She gave her car up a few years ago as she no longer felt safe driving.

We had a brief look at options to rent, the main issue is as a home owner she'd be at the back of any waiting list, plus of course we have no idea how long she might live (her mother lived to 90, so even if she matches her, 15 more years), so the equity in her house won't pay the rent for long.

I don't want to be too specific on figures, but our current mortgage is around £120k, our property I'd estimate £250k. Both of us earn around £42k a year so plenty of spare borrowing capability, just not sure how to take advantage of it.

sghughes42

boots_babe said:

We did similar to help my parents 4 or 5 years back. We didn't want to be hit with an additional stamp duty fee for a second property, but wanted to help them to purchase somewhere nearer to where we live (they were 3 hours drive away) so that we could look after them when needed. After taking legal advice, we went down the route of a Declaration of Trust. This enabled my parents to be the owners at the Land Registry, but the Declaration is registered such that when the property is sold, we effectively have a first charge on the property for 1/3 of the value, and will get the monies back.

Good luck.

Sounds interesting. Can I ask, did you help in the form of being on a mortgage, or were you able to loan them the money?

Carl2510

Wouldn’t even bother moving house at that age! It’s a hassle.

sghughes42

Slithery said:

sghughes42 said:

She's going to get it eventually...

There is no way you could possibly know that. What if your mother ends up needing the equity to pay for care home fees?

I was going to post something sarcastic here. Instead I'll just mention that the option that involved this has already had far better reasons to discount it given and leave it there.

sghughes42

Carl2510 said:

Wouldn’t even bother moving house at that age! It’s a hassle.

She's going to have to move at some point, better it be while she is still mobile enough to benefit from it.

MalMonroe

Carl2510 said:

Wouldn’t even bother moving house at that age! It’s a hassle.

She's only 75!! And wants a better quality of life. Hassle will be worth it. I'm 71 and looking to move in the next couple of years. Or maybe you'd say I'm too old?? It's no more hassle to me now than it was when I was younger. Mind you, I have had quite a lot of moves and lived overseas twice. Even so, please don't make such derogatory comments! Never say die is my motto.