Friends asked to rent to buy house!

[Greedypeopleithink]

Okay so DH close friends occupy one of DH flats. We reside in the other. Flats are part of one building. DH asked if they wanted to buy both flats as we were looking to buy bigger house. They said no and DH did not put flats up for sale because friends wanted to remain in the flat.
Fast forward 18 months.
DH and i purchased broken down house. Under full renovation. Dh friends ask if they can now buy both flats, but they want to pay for the flats on a monthly basis!! So basically rent it for the next 20 years and the own it once they have paid the value of both flats off!! I am seething. DH said no. He is very close to the friend. More like family for him. N the flats were purchased by DH before marriage etc. I just think had they bought it before or not guilt tripped us into not selling to someone else, we ciuld have bought our dream home. Instead we are going through stress of renovation and in 10 years will aim to buy house we wanted all along. I am so angry. AIBU? After all DH bought the flats before marriage so can do what he wants really. Also cherry on the cake was DH friends son saying “when you move out, i can deliver my art classes from ur flat” and the boys father said “yh good idea”. Dh is a soft touch n will prob agree until he gets tenants in there. Wat pees me off is this entitled attitude. In the past i have mentioned my views to dh but he thinks i am greedy! We are mkn ends meet and his friend is very rich by comparison. On a locum doctor salary!!

DH only told me in passing about their offer to rent n buy. N his friends son will prob deliver classes n il be the last to know!!
Then why dont you just crack on & sell the 2nd flat? Then you will have loads more money for the renovation property, & be able to finish the work sooner.

From the OP, your problem is with your DH, not his friend.

Why can't your DH offer to sell one flat to the friend, the other to someone else? Why the insistence on selling both together?

You are married. He may "bring" morr assets at the start but you contribute- e.g. with parenting your joint DC, adding any of your own earning power to improve the terms of any mortgage the two of you get, and so on.
You have to lay it out more clearly for him.
There is a huge opportunity cost in him wasting your assets - he's not making them work hard enough. How would you feel, DH, if I simply gave away some of our joint money to my friends? As that's what he's doing.

He has to stop seeing it as potential nice to have income and see it as actual cash he is giving away.

it doesn’t matter whether your husband bought the flat before you were married – they are jointly yours as you are married and you should feel perfectly entitled to a say in what happens to them. Your husband’s friends must be laughing all the way to the bank.
My recommendation would be that you sit and have a serious conversation with your husband about the fact that you are having to struggle for money while his cheeky friends are making money from their high salary and other assets.
If I were in your position, I think that (assuming that property prices are increasing where you live) I would simply Insist that the second flat is rented out which would bring in more income for you and your family. I might also be tempted to increase the rent on cheeky friends' flat.
If I were in your position I would have to have the matter resolved because otherwise it would eat away at me and make me really resentful of the fact that my husband would put other people before our own small family.

I am a bit worried about you as well OP - do you have joint finances generally or does he keep his earnings/income from rentals? It seems a bit of a red flag that you have so little money for yourself and child.

If he didn't have the flats - you'd have a nicer house and an investment fund. Sounds good!

Not being pedantic but using n/N makes your posts harder to read, can you not just use and, it's only 2 more letters

I was only skim reading and thought N was the son of the neighbours

Isn't 'ndh' next door's husband? I.e. OP's DH's friend?

I'm confused by who they all are now. I thought I got it at first...

Not sure you can ‘but’ monthly from the seller. Surely you pay your mortgage monthly?! Also what is something changes and the value doubles? Or decreases? What provision will there be for this? What is something happens to it that needs doing as technically they wouldn’t be the homeowners you would. Or they changed their mind? Legally this is weird

This is frustratingly odd.

You want to sell two flats, but when the tenant said he didn’t want to buy you didn’t sell. Your choice.

Tenant then offered to buy the flat through a convulsed long term rent to buy arrangement that no one in heir right minds would sign up to you. You say no and put the flats on the market.

This is how normal relational people would behave.

Your husband is a mug. See a solicitor and make sure your interests are protected. He will be buying magic beans next,

I would tell your dh friend to his face that you think he's a cf and you know he takes advantage of dh.
Yes there may well be fall out but also friend may realise he needs to be a real friend and not a user.

The good thing is that by the time you have renovated your house you will have a property portfolio of two flats and a nice house which is pretty amazing in this day and age so I don’t feel that sorry for you! However totally agree that he shouldn’t feel indebted to his friends to a) let them stay in the flat long term if he wants to sell it or b) let them buy it by renting over 20 years. That would be crazy!

This is all very strange and your husband is being a total arse, but I have to ask why you didn't at least sell one of the flats? Surely the cf friend doesn't get any opinion on the one they don't rent (they shouldn't get an opinion at all, but definitely shouldn't get one on a property they have nothing to do with!!)

Your DH is an idiot.
If his friends cared about him at all they wouldn't take advantage of him like this.
He is prioritising these CFs over his own DW and his own Children.
I would be mighty pissed off.

@DowntownAbby

OP starts sentences with 'N' when she means 'and' so it looks confusing. It's a new sentence so there is no need for an and at all, but that's why there are lots of N and it makes it annoying to understand.

You’re not greedy in the slightest. Your DH is incredibly selfish. He would rather his wife and child struggle financially than face up to the fact he is being taken for an absolute mug and deal with it appropriately.
I would be pointing out how this situation is affecting your quality of life and your child’s and asking why his friends family is more important to him than his own.
Regarding the art classes I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to run a business from a residential property without all the necessary paperwork involved. I’m pretty sure insurance policies would need changing etc. I’d go down that route with your DH.
And as a pp said, unless he gets his act together regarding the ‘friend’ suggest he buggers off to the flat and you and your DC live in the house.
How he has the nerve to call you greedy when you’re under financial strain due to his actions I just cannot fathom.

That's not actually a thing! Either they rent or they buy outright.

@Lulualla

Thanks!

You're not a bank or a building society or a housing association. They need a mortgage and can "rent" it back from them over 25 years like the rest of us. It's not "mean" if you're afraid of being seen that way. It's boringly normal, maybe too much so for this "artistic" family, but hard cheese!

Anything could happen to that family in the next decade and your husband will want to be available as a friend not as an outstanding creditor.

I voted YANBU to be livid, but you both were INCREDIBLY U by not selling to someone else and compromising on your house just to appease his friends.
And now you created CF

You are definitely not being unreasonable.
They are takng your dh for a mug.
He is a mug !
They are cfs of the highest order.
I would be seething too.
I have seethed in the past at my dh's generosity to cf friends !

I believe his attitude can be summarised in the vulgar phrase 'bros before hos'. That is, long-standing male friends are of greater importance than girlfiends. (It's about maintaining group cohesion). He's forgotten that he actually married you, you are his wife, the mother of his child, his very own family.

In his 'bros first' deeply sexist mentality, he probably expects women to be gold-diggers and is, given the particular dynamic with this friend, has cast you in this role.

Your DH is being taken for a mug, but worse, he’s passing the effect of that on to you so you have to financially struggle more than you have to. He’s putting his friends financial well being above your own.

Also, there may well be insurance issues if your DH’s friend’s son has business activities on the flat. I assume you have house insurance but what is the validity of it with others using it for business purposes?

Also, the idea of a family member contributing a huge chunk of equity to a property purchase, even buying it outright, then acting as 'banker', charging little or no interest, to family members, really is very normal. It's usually parents who do it for their children though.

I think this demonstrates why people shouldn't mix business with family/friends. I rented my house out to family years ago and still regret it as although they eventually bought it they paid less than the market value. I wish I had evicted them and sold afterwards but it is hard to do that to family.
Hopefully your DH will see sense eventually but in the meantime are they paying the market value for rent?

@Greedypeopleithink

Buying a house by paying rent?

In any event it does not work like that! All house sales must be done formally by [for example] getting a mortgage.

The proposal is hopeless! Sell as usual to someone else