To want DH to ask his dad if he would consider lending us some money so we can afford the deposit on a house...?

[josben]

hi, just wanted a general opinion on this... we are currently between houses (staying with my mum) and we probably need to borrow an extra £5,000 to afford a 4 bed house that we have seen in the town where we live.

But having paid off debts and moving expenses we are roughly £5,000 short of being able to afford a house we want... But DH does not want to ask his dad, and I can't ask my mum as she has no spare money...

I would rather not have to do it but if we don't I feel we will never find a house... we have been looking for 6 months!

We have never asked for or have been given any money from his dad before ...

They have been saying interest rates will shoot up since 2007, I should know we stupidly listened and fixed our mortgage for 5 years. In March my mortgage will drop for £945 to £268.
I could afford three times my house from 2007 prices !
You cannot look back at how things were 10, 15 years ago and base advice on that because the goal posts have completely changed. Nobody borrows 3 times their income any more, it's all changed not for the better but it has changed.

Just as a warning. My parents lent me some money to buy my first house and then needed it back at a really difficult time for me. I paid them back, but it was a struggle.

Things have not even started to get bad in the uk.

OK, so you bought at the wrong time and chose a fixed rate mortgage so you haven't benefitted from the lower interest rates. But it's absurd to think that they will stay this low forever, and you would be an idiot to advise not to budget for an increase.

Lots of people still borrow three times their salary. I was offered five times mine, after the whole credit crunch saga. We could have had a wonderful house on that sort of mortgage, but we'd have been saddled with massive debt to go with it. Perhaps people are just becoming a bit wiser about the size of mortgage they are prepared to take on.

And anybody who suggests, like Heswall, that interest rates will not go up over the course of the OP's 25 year mortgage is giving dangerously stupid advice.

Hopefully, for those of us with mortgages, the rates will stay low for another few years - but the chances of them staying low are slim. The OP will be taking a massive gamble if she is calculating what she can afford based only on current rates.

I think i probably have my answer - its not fair to ask him to do something hes not comfortable doing

That sounds right. It is frustrating though when your friends all get a leg up.

but it does make me laugh that no one has come forward to say that they have been given financial help towards buying their home from their parents/inlaw Perhaps nobody HAS been given financial help from their parents to buy a house.

josben- a lot of my friends were given financial help to buy houses. Their families were better off than mine and they cannot understand what it's like to struggle. It does annoy me. However, it is not the norm to go to Mum and Dad to have help buying a house.

There's no way I would ask my Dad for money if my DH pressured me to. It would really affect our future relationship and I think, hurt my father's feelings as he does a lot of other things for us.

Sharing a room is no big deal. Just because you would like your children to have their room doesn't mean that you merit a 4 bed house.

The feeling of pride I have in knowing I have never been cap in hand to my parents is a really great one.

Get a nice three bed house and enjoy a fresh start. If your kids are the right age they might actually LOVE bunk beds.

I don't blame him for feeling uincomfortable. I think you have to be guided by him TBH - if he feels unhappy about asking that might be because he has a feeling for how the request will be received.

Yes, my parents did give me some money once. When they had sold some property and wanted to give some of the money to DB and I, but it was at a time that suited them, not me, and I didn't ask. My parents are relatively asset-rich but cash poor - if I asked them for money out of the blue not only would they be taken-aback, they simply wouldn't have access to it.

FGS - the Mumsnet quakers are out in force today!

OP - if you think your FIL can afford it, ask. Offer to pay the same interest he has in his savings account so he won't be out of pocket, and set up a standing order for repayments. There's nothing wrong with starting the payments, say, four months down the line, as long as the interest starts being calculated from day one.

When I was a kid the neighbours had ten kids sharing three bedrooms between the kids. I think that two of your kids sharing a room may not be the worst thing.

Are you looking at any three bed houses? Some of them may be marketed as three bed but have a downstairs study or playroom which could be converted. Some of them may have one huge bedroom which you could turn into two with a dividing wall. Some of them may be cheap enough to buy and then be able to afford an attic conversion and still be cheaper than a 4 bed.

I think it's unreasonable to ask anyone to help with a house purchase. You could drop some hints about how you're 5k off target and see if they offer.

I've skimmed because the posters giving the OP the second degree and the judginess were giving me arse ache.

If all that is standing between you and the house is £5K then it's worth asking. He can only say no and it's £5K not £500K.

And yes, we've been given help by our parents and bloody grateful we are for it too.

OP you dont say if you already have spoken with your DH about asking andhe has said no. Maybe he knows his Dad wouldnt be keen to do it - I know mine wouldnt.

Aside from that what everyone is saying re interest rates going up and general affordability of a 4 bed house is spot on.

Get a 3 bed and make it a lovely home and good luck with the whole process its sooo stressful !

Don't know if I could ever come out and ask. BUT... after we lost out on a house we really loved, because someone else offered more money, the in-laws said, "Oh, you were 20k short? If we'd known we could have lent it to you." And I was a bit cross with DH who doesn't share much with his parents!

(This was in the days of 2.5 x joint salary, so repayments would not have been difficult, just raising the money in the first place.)

sorry but your children dont really need a bedroom of their own why put yourself and FIL in debt just for extra rooms If your Husband has been brought upt o stand on his own to feet and buy what he can afford then its U to ask fil for money ,

I was fortunate to be given a reasonable amount by my grandparents which paid for the deposit on a nice flat back in 1997. The gift was totally unexpected and very welcomed. When we sold the flat, kids were not on the radar and we bought a 3 bed house in a fairly nice part of town. We had to re-extend the mortgage back to 25 yrs as my job was on the line and i never knew if i would get paid that month or not.
Even if I went back to work full time, we would struggle to get a mortgage on a 4 bed house in our road so we went for the loft conversion route which is a fraction of the moving costs. As long as we both stay in employment, our mortgage will be paid off in 10 yrs time, less if we can overpay and we have just fixed the rate for 5 yrs at a low amount so when the rates do go up, we will have little left.
After two redundancies and two scares, we do not want to be in a position where we absolutely need 2 salaries to pay the mortgage.

You need to have an idea of when you can pay back a loan before you ask for it.

Nobody predicted the rates would go this low and stay there for 5 years we aren't talking a blip like when they hit 15% for a few days, low interest rates are clearly a policy on the basis that a heck of a lot of people are mortgaged up to the hilt and just 1% rise would see thousands on the streets. The government cannot cope with that situation and if you think the government aren't controlling the bank of England then you're an idiot.

Viva makes a good point. A lot of 3 bed houses may have a converted attic or attic space that can't legally be described as a fourth bedroom. Or they may have planning permission or a study/extra reception room.

Others posters have a good point too. Borrowing 5k still means a debt of 5k! Add that on to moving costs and any necessary bits of house tweaking you'll need to do and it's extra expense on top of a mortgage that's stretching you anyway.

5 years is nothing over the life of a loan though.

My main priority is holding on to the house, better a smaller more affordable house that you keep than a bigger flasher one that you lose.

Slowly and carefully now we have kids, the stakes are too high.

5 years is nothing over the life of a loan though. What if the FIL can't wait five years to be paid back?

I think the OP should go for a 3 bed with potential that is affordable. If they can't save in six months, then an overstretched mortgage and loan of five grand will really stretch them.

However better a smaller more affordable house that you keep than a bigger flasher one that you lose is an excellent quote morloth.

The 5 year comment was in response to Haswell saying that interest rates have been stable for that long.

Personally, I would have to be on the breadline before borrowing money from family, I have never seen that work, not ever.

Gifts yes, loans no.

What if the FIL doesn't need to be paid back?

I'm going to go against the grain here. I take the point that caution is best, but IME lots of parents help their kids out with buying houses and often although it starts as a 'lend', it ends up as a gift and no harm is done. I guess it all depends on how reluctant your DH is to ask his dad. If he's adamant, then it's a non-starter, unless you're willing to ask the FIL yourself? But if DH is persuadable, then I'd persuade him. Don't really see what the big deal is. If FIL says no, then you know. But if he says yes, it'll make a big difference to your family's life. As long as you can make the mortgage payments.

I'm saying this as someone who isn't crap with money, so perhaps people are right to urge caution. But so many parents do want to help their kids out, and in a way I think they should if they can, if they bought in an era where houses cost 3k and they paid off their mortgages ages ago. It's all very well to bring your kids up not to borrow, but look at the world they've left for us!

Interest rates will rise The low rates are like QE an emergency measure which may be keeping people in their houses but is alienating savers and overseas investors both of which the govt need to win over sooner rather than later. This govt will have no problem raising rates imo as they are without exception wealthy and many are landowners so higher rates suit them and a lot of their voters/constituents. Osborne has already hinted at this and has indicated that schemes where you can stay in your house but the govt owns it and you can buy back %s over time if possible are being looked at. If you have borrowed to the extent that a 1% rise will have you on the street then there is your answer about over stretching. The US allowed the housing market to go to the wall no bail outs many lost their houses etc but now they are on the up.The initial recession should have been allowed to happen and we would be on the way out of it by now but we haven't seen anything yet. Soon it will be worthless having a low rate as without a job its not sustainable. Do not over borrow now it is not a good time to take a risk.

Did I get help from parents to get on the property ladder? - No
Could they have afforded it? - probably, and they would have lent it even if it left them short but it's my responsibility to take care of my family not my parents, or the state etc.

How did I afford to have a 4 bed house? -

1. I only had the children I could afford to feed, house, clothe and rear to the standard I wanted.
2. I worked out what my outgoings would be if interest rates went up and built in a huge margin of affordability (interest rates would have had to go up to 20% before we couldn't afford mortgage)
3. Saved money by only buying second hand clothes for self, cooking cheaper cuts of meat and old fashioned thrift, not buying non essentials - (newer car, flat screen TV, flash phone etc) unless we could pay for them up front.