First Time Buyer and Inheritance

EscaladeTo

Hello. I have a question about First Time Buyer Scheme.

My partner and I are trying to buy the first house and we would like to take advantage of the First Time Buyer program. Two years ago my partner's father died and after many months of court cases, the apartment that remained after him was divided equally into three siblings. As soon as we received the relevant documents, we immediately sold the house and divided the money from the sale into three people, each received an amount of around £ 14,000. We decided to use this money for overpayment because we already had money for the 5% deposit itself.

Then we spoke to several mortgage brokers and each of them had a different opinion:

- It is not possible to use FTB if we had any interest in any apartment anywhere in the world

- It is possible to use FTB because it was not a majority stake in the property

- It is possible to take advantage of an FTB as the value of the property interest has not exceeded £ 40,000

There were a few other answers but as you can see they were all contradictory. I'd like to know what it really looks like.

Of course, it is not about avoiding SDLT or other tax combinations - the problem is only that at the moment we only have a 5% deposit and buying a house without much overpayment in our area is practically impossible.

Keep_pedalling

As long as the property was never been put into the beneficiaries name and it was sold by the executors acting for the estate, it should not effect FTB status. If the property was transferred prior to the sale then that was a big mistake.

MWT

EscaladeTo said:

As soon as we received the relevant documents, we immediately sold the house and divided the money from the sale into three people, each received an amount of around £ 14,000. We decided to use this money for overpayment because we already had money for the 5% deposit itself.

Was the property sold by the executors of the estate and the proceeds divided, or was the property transferred from the estate into the names of the 3 beneficiaries and then sold by them?

EscaladeTo

Property was transfered because previous owner didn't leave his last will.

MWT

EscaladeTo said:

Property was transfered because previous owner didn't leave his last will.

The lack of a Will doesn't really have any impact on the way the estate was settled, but as far as I know if the property was transferred into their joint names and they subsequently sold it then your partner is not a first-time buyer.

This was something that should have, and could have been avoided.  

See what some of the brokers on here have to say though just in case there is a way around it for any of the help-to-buy schemes...

penners324

What are you over paying as opposed to adding the inheritance to the deposit savings?

MWT

penners324 said:

What are you over paying as opposed to adding the inheritance to the deposit savings?

I took that to mean they intended to use it to overpay once they had got their mortgage.