Advice on current situation

Herzlos

str8g8 said:

We have paid down the debt from around 20k to 4k in around 2 years. If we carry on as we are we could be debt free by the end of the year.

That doesn't sound like debt problems that'd force the sell of the BTL especially if it's making a profit. 

You should go over to the debt free board and make a post with a breakdown of income/outgoings to get advice on where you can cut back.


Also given the roof repairs are urgent, can you remortgage to fund them? That'll be near instant whereas selling the BTL could take easily 6-12 months. 

_Penny_Dreadful

Reading between the lines your partner has racked up £20,000 of debt and has a rental property which she cannot afford to maintain. You are paying the £20,000 of debt together so that your partner can maintain her equity of £50,000 meanwhile you appear to have zero savings of your own. Your jointly owned home is in urgent need of repairs which you cannot afford. 

You think you’ll partner will be debt free by the end of the year and I doubt you’d be able to evict the tenants and sell the property before the end of the year even if both processes went smoothly. Selling the rental property would trigger a CGT liability for your partner. Once your partner’s debts are paid off how long will it take you to save enough to repair your own home and for your partner to tackle the maintenance in the rental property? What would your partner do if say the boiler in the rental property broke down tomorrow and needed replaced? Could she afford to stop paying down the debt and divert the funds to the rental property instead? 

Your partner needs to tackle the root cause of that £20,000 debt or it will happen again. The Debt Free Wannabe board is littered with people whose partners and families helped them out of debt only to find themselves back in debt again. I’ve also witnessed it first hand in my own family. 

Bigphil1474

Op, you should have led with the debt going down from £20k to £4k in 2 years tbh. That's a very health drop down, at roughly £800 a month? I was imagining £100k worth of debt that would take 20 years to clear. At that rate you could have a £12k savings pot in 2 years time.

If the only debt is that £4k, and as above the cause of the problem debt is dealt with, I'd change my mind and say keep the second house, may be slow down the debt repayment (if it's not high interest rates) to build up a repair fund for your rented property? Once the debt is cleared, look at saving toward home repairs or cheap finance for it, as you'd in theory have £800 a month spare.