So, to set out the starting premise: My partner's parents offered to buy us a house in January. Before I say anything else I want to note that I am hugely grateful for this. It's a massively nice thing to do, and I very much appreciate the financial burden involved. Getting a house in London is pretty much the same as a decent size lottery win, and I don't want anyone to think I'm not very thankful for the offer.
With that caveat out of the way, I have some issues with things, and I want to know if I'm being out of line or not. Issues:
- They want a lot of say in things. They keep saying it should be a "forever home" where we're happy, but they also keep trying to tell us where it should be. We live in Kings Cross at the moment, and are looking at areas a bit further out but with good transport links such as Colliers Wood, Colindale, Walthamstow, and Leytonstone. Her parents seem determined that we should live somewhere like Stevenage, St Albans, or Chorley Wood, and just ignore us whenever we say those places are too far out. For reference, I've lived my whole life in London, have moved around it a lot, and my dad is a licensed black cab driver who did the knowledge and taught me a lot about different bits of London. I know this city well. Her parents live in Yorkshire and spend as little time down here as possible. They don't know what this city is like.
- Their organisation. They made this offer to us in January. They only spoke to their accountant about the practicality of it this week. I appreciate that house buying isn't a fast process, but they are dragging their heels at every step. My partner hates living where we do at the moment and is desperate to get out, but they seem in no rush to do anything.
- Their lack of communication. It's only this week that they've given us a rough idea of budget, and even then they won't give us an actual number for what our upper limit is, which makes it hard to work out what we can realistically look at. They also won't discuss housing around me at all. This stresses my partner out to no end. She doesn't want to have to play messenger, running back and forth between us, but they're not giving her much choice. They've apparently pretty much made it clear to her that I'm considered a plus one, so my opinion doesn't matter, so there's no point involving me in the conversation.
- And this is the kicker: Apparently her dad has now said that he thinks I should get a mortgage and contribute to the cost of the house. For the record: her parents are minted. They don't need the money I would add to afford this place. They can drop £800k on a house and not even really notice. I'm a mid level civil servant, I could get about £120k on a mortgage max. So it's not the case that they need me to contribute. Her dad just thinks I should have "skin in the game" to make things fair. This is a new development, and certainly wasn't mentioned when they made the offer. I made career decisions based on their offer (could have taken a 3 year posting in New York and lived rent free in Manhattan the whole time, but chose to stay in London because I thought we were getting a house), so am feeling a bit miffed that they're changing the terms of the offer on us.
I guess I have a couple of questions:
A) AIBU to think that they're making this harder than it needs to be? And that if they're going to make the offer they shouldn't then turn around and change the terms?
B) Could I even get a mortgage? Her parents want to keep the house in their name for at least a few years, so that if anything goes wrong between us I can't lay a claim on it. Which is fair enough, I can understand wanting to protect your investment. But I feel pretty sure a bank won't lend me any kind of money if the house isn't in my name, because then the bank has no security on their loan?