to be a little suspicious of landlord MIL.

[SmellsLikeTeenStrop]

Sorry, this is long.

DH and I rent from my MIL. She bought the house for DH before we met and there was always the understanding that when he had a steady income that would enable him to take on a mortgage she would let him buy the house at the same price she paid for it.

This was over 10 years ago, DH and I live here with our DCs and we're now in a position where we can buy the house, but now the plan seems to have changed. MIL is very cagey when we try and talk to her about buying the house. In the past she's said she'll 'be fair' when it comes to selling the house, but she's also said that for various reasons it would be impossible to sell the house to us for anything less than full market value. We've been told that the rent barely covers the mortgage and insurance, but we've also been told that she relies on our rent as her main source of income.

The last discussion we had she was pushing towards us not buying the house but instead having our names added to the mortgage and taking over the mortgage payments. I asked her how much the mortgage was and she claimed not to remember.

She's not been the best landlord in the world, she's made no effort to update the house at all. We can't have the boiler serviced because it's so old there are no parts available for it - but she can't replace the boiler as she has no money. The house is in massive need of updating, the kitchen is at least 30 years old, ditto the bathroom. The windows we're fighting a losing battle with, we sand them down and paint them every other year but they're deteriorating more and more.

For a house we're merely renting, it's not suitable for us any more. We're expecting another DC soon and we're a bit squished as it is. If we owned the house DH and I would hang on here a bit longer to improve the house and hopefully get it to a point where we can sell it on at market value and use the equity for a bigger home. Alternatively we could extend and/or add a loft conversion. MIL is aware that this is what we want to do and has said that this would be fine, but that was when we weren't in a position where we could actually buy the house.

If she won't sell us this house than the only real alternative is for us to move out. I won't hang on renting a house that is too small for us, especially with all the issues we're having with it. Us moving out would either force MIL to sell, or to invest a few thousand in to the property before she could get new tenants in. Given the amount of work the house needs, I can't imagine it would sell very quickly unless she sold it very cheaply.

So, after this huge wall of text. AIBU to be suspicious of MIL and WIBU to expect her to honour the promise she made to DH but if that really is impossible for her, to give us a mahoosive discount to take in to account the years of rental we've been paying, plus the huge amount of money we'll need to invest in the house?

sallying a conservative estimate would put that figure at around 20k more than she originally paid for it. She didn't pay a lot for it btw, less than 40k. Up until the point she re-mortgaged we could have been paying twice the amount in rent that she was paying in mortgage ..... oh fuck

oh fuck indeed! You've paid all that money in rent, she's not maintained the boiler and YOU have even had to repair the rotting window frames. She's a conniving, thieving bitch who has played games with your lives.

In your place I wouldn't have the meeting. It's not going to achieve anything. You won't have the house safe and habitable before the baby arrives. Better to get a short-term let, even if you have to put some furniture in store until you find a suitable permanent home.

But shall you live there and put up with mayhem with a newborn, just because your husband wants the house to be OK for the NEXT tenants?

I would live here and put up with mayhem while waiting for a house purchase.

Is she likely to tell you that as it's dh's house she was happy to get the mortgage for him but assumed he'd be maintaining it?

It's possible, but she has done some small maintenance work on it. She's replaced the front door, and she gives us the money for window paint.

Is she likely to tell you that as it's dh's house she was happy to get the mortgage for him but assumed he'd be maintaining it?

But you've been paying rent over and above what was owed on the mortgage. It is because she is in receipt of the rent that she has the obligation to maintain the house. If she'd negotiated a minimal rent to cover the mortgage costs, on the basis that you would then shoulder the maintenance costs, it would be different. That's not what has happened.

In your place I wouldn't have the meeting. It's not going to achieve anything.

We need to have this meeting. It's not just a meeting with a landlord to sort out a dodgy boiler. It's a meeting with a family member who has been lying to us, strung us along for years, endangered our children and tried to rip us off over the house.

iismum that's a good point, I'll remember that.

She definitely sounds deceptive, grasping and selfish. But I bet she truly is convinced she wants the best for you!

In her place, I would be telling you that "you're overly paranoid about tiny risks. I brought up a family with a similar boiler, and your husband's here to tell the tale, isn't he? No-one fussed about that kind of thing then. It's just a silly modern thing. If it's that dangerous, how come it's still going? It's proven it's reliable, surely? Ten years now. Solid workmanship. Edna down the road replaced hers five years ago, and it's been no end of trouble.

Look, you're not really bothered about it, are you? Yiu never were before. This is just an excuse. How can you be like this? I bought this house for you? "

And so on. Probably with some blame of the EU thrown in, for good measure.

If the above is nothing like your MIL, ignore it.

Could she claim she's protecting your future inheritance by not wasting money on the boiler, too? Have a withering look prepared, just in case.

Good, iismum, I'm glad someone had an answer to that! I couldn't think of what I would say if I had been in op's position and MIL had come up with that. Good old MN!

Good luck for the meeting tomorrow.

Oh my god I cannot believe she is so fucking stingy that she won't replace the boiler. And as for her tears - she can stick them where the sun doesn't shine. She is manipulative and is conning you. The fact that she let's you live with a boiler that hasn't been checked is enough for me, it says 'I don't give a shit about you and care more about money.'

Move out, move out now and leave her to it. I am disgusted by her and you should be too.

Please don't live with a boiler like this and DO NOT pay for a new one or go on the mortgage. I can't stress how much you Mil's attitude to this disgusts me!

I had a quick go on a mortgage calculator last night . On a 40k mortgage, interest rate 6% ( reasonable average over last 10 years ?) a repayment mortgage would be 257 per month.

(Obviously this doesn't allow for any remortgage, where MIL has trousered all the equity).

A more than generous figure to replace the boiler and do remedial work to supply pipes, CH system would be 3000. This would work out at 25 per month over the 10 years for your MIL to cover costs. Though obviously it is her responsibility to pay for it anyway, not yours DS the tenant

You owe her nothing so fuck waiting unil the house is ready for the next tenants.

Don't you see the plainist hardest coldest fact? That boiler could KILL you, it could KILL your children. You don't need anymore facts than that. She doesn't deserve anything and doesn't even deserve to see you. She sounds like a money grasping nasty and manipulative woman and you should treat her as such.

I am so so disgusted by her.

Oooh I've looked that up and yes we can get copies of cheques. Copies are stored on microfilm and I can request copies of those. That is good to know

That's good! BUT you still need her to acknowledge that these were for rent for the property, so you have proof that you have been paying rent for x number of years for any future landlords, should you need to rent another property in the future.

Hope it goes ok today SmellsLikeTeenStrop.

Have you an 'official' lease on the property - you know, in writing where people signed at the bottom?

Any conditions in it? Like maintenance etc?

On the subject of figures, you might want to calculate how much you have paid in rent over the years, what the original mortgage payments on the house were, and how much profit she's made out of you.

Then when she starts with the waterworks , and how hurt she'll be if she can't carry on milking you for cash while risking the lives of babies you won't buy the house from her, you can explain that the (say) twenty thousand clear profit she's made out of you must soothe the pain a bit.

And if she says she had to remortgage - well then she has taken the equity out as profit.

OP, my parents actually did what your MIL claimed to do - bought me a house to help me on the property ladder. Except they made no money off me, of course, and they have always acted like it's our house (and yes, I and now DH pay for repairs, but that's because it IS and always has been MY house). The way we did it, I paid for solicitors fees on purchasing the house, the 'rent' I paid was exactly the amount of the mortgage, and I covered the insurance my dad held on the property too. My parents wouldn't have DREAMED of remortgaging my house! Once DH was earning enough that we could get a mortgage for the house, we bought it from them, for what they paid for it, which was luckily near enough current market value since house prices had risen, then crashed, then slowly started to rise again since we bought it. Had the value risen, I expect we'd have split the profit.

I'm telling you this so you can point out to MIL if necessary how it would/should have worked had she really bought the house for your DH rather than for profit.

Good luck today.

I would just have in mind the fact that she paid say £35k and you've already paid her say £50k, therefore she should just give it to you shouldn't she??

You may not want to go down that line but you can use it to make yourself sound more reasonable i.e. "If I was being strictly correct we've already paid you £15-20k more than you paid for it, even bearing in mind interest costs we've paid £2k more than it's cost you, so it should be ours already BUT we're only asking for x".

Be sure what you want out of it and do lots of "we accept you think x,y,z but from our point of view/ in reality x is what has been happening".

Best of luck, let us know how it goes.

Obviously insert actual figures!!

We had to replace our boiler last year; it wasn't a completely straightforward job, the plumber is a friend so charged us less. £3k though.

Hope it goes well today, SmellsLikeTeenStrop.

Hope it's going well.

Any update OP?

That was messy.

She's not going to replace the boiler, she has no money.

In brief, the holiday homes are in foreign parts, years ago she heard about some too good to be true investment in holiday cottages and she put a huge amount of money in, including equity from this house when she remortgaged. The deal went sour and the cottages are sitting out there unused while the various owners including MIL are fighting over them in court. SIL is another one of the investors and apparently she hasn't seen any returns either.

She brought up putting our names on the mortgage of this house and really tried hard to dissuade us from getting our own mortgage claiming we would get bad interest rates because our deposit isn't big enough, that there are lots of hidden fees. She wants us to show her the mortgage quotes before we sign up for anything . What she proposes is we put our names on the mortgage and next year hers come off, apparently she got a really good deal with this house and the interest rates are low (she remembers the interest rates but not the amount of the mortgage) and then we might be able to transfer this mortgage over to a new house and keep the low interest rates ... that doesn't sound plausible, has anyone heard of this happening?

She did cry, in fact she got pretty hysterical. It was incredibly difficult to talk to her because she constantly interrupted to talk about herself and how all these terrible things have happened to her and how depressed she is. She just wasn't interested in us, I tried to explain my concerns of having small children in a house with an unsafe boiler and I got in return ''well I live in a house with an unsafe boiler and I don't have any money to replace it''. She kept repeating that it was all for us but she wasn't interested in me telling my side and how her decisions have and could affect my family, when I tried she kept getting hysterical.

Also, I'm furious with DH because he betrayed me and comforted her basically gave the impression that we would fork out for the repairs ourselves. This was after I'd told her that I felt that the best option for my family was to buy our own house. I'm tempted to tell him to bugger off home with his mum because that is clearly where his loyalty lies. Hats off to the woman, she can play her son like a sodding violin.

I'm now hiding upstairs having a lie down while DH and his mum play happy families. I'm going to stay here until she goes.

Be nice, I've had a stressful experience.

We're going to move, at least, I'm going to move with the DCs. DH can do what he wants.

FFS, why would he even consider taking financial advice from somebody who has made such a mess of her own.

I thought it would go this way. :-(

I think you should move to a new rental this week, if at all possible.