My fiancé and I are expecting our first child. We live in my fiancé’s house and I pay him rent of £300/month.
He also rents out 2 rooms of the house to a friend for £515, but because the baby is coming we’ve decided it’s best for him to move out. So, my question is about what my rent should be now.
I suggested he work out the cost of his mortgage and all bills and split it down the middle, which would come to £390. He thinks it should be more......
Together we have purchased a derelict farmhouse, which we intend to refurbish into our forever home - we paid in cash and the refurb should start in about 6-9 months. We’re both fairly well off, earn about the same salary, but he has other houses that he rents out, so he has more cash savings than me. When we purchased the farmhouse, he put in a larger proportion of cash than I did (I’ve so far provided just over 25%) and the intention is that it’ll even out when I pay off the mortgage that we’ll need for the refurb.
I’ll add here that I was a first time buyer and had he been as well we’d have had no stamp duty to pay. But because he owns more than 1 house it put it up to just over £8k. To keep the peace I just paid half.
Since then, he has managed to save all the cash he needs to provide towards the refurb, c. £100k. But he is saying, instead of keeping it as cash and earning nothing from it, he could use it to pay off the mortgage on one of his rental houses now. If he doesn’t do this, we can use the cash for the refurb first, then I could delay getting the refurb mortgage that I need, thereby saving me money (it’s more expensive than a normal mortgage). It would be delayed by about 4 months, but this would mean I can get one with a 1yr term instead of 2 yrs, before remortgaging. So, to compensate for him not paying off his rental property mortgage now, he thinks I should pay half of it as additional rent (an extra £160/month). But, I argued that if he were to pay off his rental mortgage now, then he would also need an expensive refurb mortgage too, so keeping the cash is saving him money as well, not just me.
As an aside, I am not allowed to do my regular job whilst pregnant (not corona related, it’s just how it is) and am working from home, but my take home pay is reduced by about £500/month. So I’m also losing about £4K in total each time I’m pregnant with our child.
Complicated I know, which is why I can’t tell who is being tight/unreasonable.