Why is it ok to 'pay the landlords mortgage' but not your partners?

[Luidaeg]

So many threads I have seen where one person owns a house and the partner is moving in (sometimes planning) and they are told, you shouldn't pay towards their mortgage unless you are married and it is shared.

Why?

Why should someone live rent free just because they have chosen a partner who is in the position of owning a house?

Obviously you don't want to 'make a profit' on them, but equally you can't expect a free ride.

You aren’t wrong. A reasonable amount of ‘rent’ as a contribution is completely normal in the real world.
The argument on here is he would be paying the mortgage if he lived alone, but the other partner would be paying rent or a mortgage to live elsewhere and too.
However this is mumsnet and if a woman moves in with her partner she shouldn’t pay a penny but if the genders are flipped he would be a freeloading scumbag.

Because your landlord doesn't owe you jack shit (other than managing their properly legally and responsibly) and you probably aren't going to cut your work hours in order to take care of your landlord's kids.

If you are a woman and your partner is accumulating equity in a home in which you have no stake, it's extremely sensible to think about whether that's what you want and what your situation would be if the relationship were to end.

When you rent you know that the house belongs to the landlord and will never belong to you.
If you are moving in with some in a relationship (with the hope that you will be together forever) but you don't marry but live together for 45 years and then split you could end up with zero money and have a house that you helped pay for but you have no claim on.
If you don't want to marry you should at least get added to the mortgage as proof you are paying towards it.

Because with a landlord you a degree of legal protection?
Because a landlord/tenant relationship is a business arrangement ?

If the relationship breaks down you aren’t entitled to a notice period to leave, you have far less protection than when renting (although obviously that isn’t always secure you do have legal protections

If you rent somewhere and are not a complete idiot you will have signed a tenancy agreement which gives you certain rights, such as limits on the notice you get before eviction. If you move in with a partner it's unusual to have a signed agreement.

Your basic idea is right though, partners who move in should share the bills and pay "rent" to the other partner. It should be documented though so that both partners have a degree of protection when the relationship goes wrong.

Because when you leave a rented property you can't make a claim to the house, or make the landlord sell the house and you get a % of the equity.

Pay your partners mortgage, you split and move out, there's a possibility you can make a claim to any equity in the house

I agree OP, when now DH first moved in with me he was renting and I owned my home (mortgage), he paid half of everything because he's an adult and should pay his way, it was still significantly cheaper for him than private renting so he had no objections. We did discuss what would happen if we split and he said well I can save more each month than I could in rented so I'll be better off anyway. We liked out savings plus the equity from my property when we got married and bought our first house together, but neither of us would've felt hard done by if it hadn't panned out that way.
There was no way I was paying the mortgage by myself while he had a shedload more disposable income than me and I was putting a roof over his head, if he'd suggested it he wouldn't have moved in.

This is far too sensible and normal an answer for MN and exactly what we did too.

I think it’s okay to pay some rent but it shouldn’t be half the mortgage. It’s a different situation, you basically have almost no rights if you aren’t married so it should be a much smaller figure - like a lodger amount.

It's obviously different as, with a rental, you have a tenancy agreement so will get a minimum of 2 months notice etc.

I've been discussing this recently with DP as we are talking about moving in together. We have the option of moving in to his and do some renovation work or buy a house together. If we decide for me to move in with him we will re-mortgage in joint names. I will also invest an amount into the house which will pay for the renovations. Basically, we will write a contract that ring-fences his current equity and my investment. The remainder will be mortgaged between us. Should we split up in the future we will get the ring-fenced money back and any further equity (as a result of reducing the mortgage or the house rising in value) will be split 50/50. This feels fair to me and both protects our own investments but also means that I will get the benefit of paying into the mortgage and any increase in the house value.

We are still in the early stages of discussing this and will get advise from professionals but it seems fair and reasonable to me. Personally I wouldn't move in with anyone and pay half the mortgage without either an arrangement as above, reduced contribution to allow the non-owner to create savings for protection, or a tenancy agreement of some kind.

what if half the mortage is way cheaper than half the rent would be for a similar property in the area?

3 bed house in Crawley West Sussex - first one - £1350 a month
www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/123928076#/?channel=RES_LET

3 bed house same area £325,000 - say they have 150k equity, mortgage is around £812 a month
www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/123549818#/?channel=RES_BUY

So if partner was renting the first one and paying 50% they would pay £675 a month, against £406 to the mortaged one

What is fair from that? I think that £406 is very fair

as the partner is benefiting from the owners equity by living there cheaper, and the owner is benefitting from a contribution to the mortgage - so everyone wins

LOL at thinking lodgers rent is a much smaller amount than half a mortgage.

I tried to make this point on a thread the other day. Most posters were horrified that a woman was willingly paying to live in her boyfriends 3 bedroom house.

I was once asked by a friend (not a close one) if they could rent my vacant flat for 50% market value as I had no outstanding mortgage on it....🙄 were no longer friends ss I declined her kind offer.

It's irrelevant what the monthly mortgage payment is on a house v rent payment.
Maintenance, deposit, amount of mortgage paid etc need considering. The going rate is only fair way

i think you should pay rent, but not necessarily half of the market rate as you aren’t getting what you’d pay for if you were renting your own 1 bed house for example, you’re only getting half a room. Plus if it’s not your property, you don’t want to be worse off if you do split up, so you need to be able to save your own money for a deposit.
But I’d agree yes you’d need to pay rent and bills.
Then to complicate things, what if the owner partner earns loads, then you might be paying higher rent and bills than you can afford or would have chosen. Sometimes the owner might have no mortgage. Or the owner might not have much money and partner moving in increases their bills a lot.

There aren’t usually threads about people both benefiting, usually its when there’s something unfair about it.

You don't fuck your landlord, although of course you may feel they are fucking you.

If it's a lodger type arrangement with your own space then it's easier to see the logic of paying rent. But charging full room rental and offering half a bed and no time and space to yourself isn't really a lodger agreement either.

I'm not massively opposed to the concept, where it's a fairly new relationship, but when it's something longer term it's something I would feel less comfortable with. It leaves the house owner with a lot of power as the rent contribution might be stopping the other person from saving for their own deposit, whilst also making it hard for them to leave as they would also become homeless.

You'll probably find a lot of people think landlords are parasites as well though, so thry may think paying rent in both scenarios is terrible

I wouldn't move into a house my partner owned and pay rent. I would only move in with a partner by sharing a mortgage on a new property. I suppose some people may not be able to even afford to get a mortgage with the partner that already owns a property. I would still rent privately and save for a deposit if that was my situation, for the protections mentioned above from a tenancy agreement.

The partner receiving rent from their partner has absolutely no incentive to share a mortgage in the future either. It just seems like a very heart over head decision to make for the 'renter' in the relationship.

The difference is obvious. You pay rent to a LL and have a tenancy agreement then you have a legal right to occupy the property. The LL has obligations in law and so does the tenant. You have legal protection to peaceful enjoyment of that property and a legal process of eviction.

If you move in with a partner, none of those legal protections apply, if the relationship ends you can be required to leave, and would have to apply to the courts if you wanted to have your right to remain decided, share of equity etc.

It may make sense to a homeowner to require a "rent" / contribution to the mortgage if a partner moves in with them. But it does not equate to a legal tenancy.

If you live with someone you are not legally protected unless you formalise your relationship with a civil partnership or marriage. No point in being naive about this.

Totally agree OP.

The issue with a partner is lines get very blurred. If you do move in and subsidise rent you need terms written down somewhere

I am friends with a couple who are in the process of splitting up. Going to explain and try not to apply gender, as my DH and I are both friends with one of the couple and we cannot work out what is 'right' and we suspect there is no clear answer in the absence of marriage (hope this isn't hijacking the thread but I think it's relevant - just report comment if it bugs you).

Partner A owned a house for 3 years before the start of the relationship and put down a 30% deposit. When they got together (they had been friends for a long time) B was trying to buy a flat but in the end they moved in together to A's house because they couldn't rent anywhere of a similar size for anything close to the mortgage (London).

They have done 2 rounds of work on the house, funded 75% by A and 25% by B which has significantly increased value. Of course, when they were doing this work they were talking about it being their 'forever home' and where they wanted to watch their children grow up.

They lived together in the property for 4 years before having DC (1 DS).

They are not married.

B used to pay half the mortgage and bills (which in total was a lot less than they paid in rent alone), but for past 2 years has paid nursery fees for DC, which is actually higher than mortgage. They both pay 50% of bills.

B believes the house should be sold, deposit and first 3 years of equity returned to A and they should then get half the equity each from the date B moved in. A believes the house in in their name only, B had no deposit to buy anywhere before moving in and therefore B was renting and is not entitled to anything. We are talking about very large sums of money.

This is the problem with paying a partner's mortgage - one person feels they are investing in their future as a couple, when in reality if they split, they (may) become 'just a tenant'.

(We've told them both to talk to solicitors but whatever the conclusion they will probably both be unhappy and forced to compromise.)

@JenniferPlantain that is a really tough one

Thinking about it - B should have been saving the money they saved on rent (hindsight is a wonderful thing) and not paid anything towards the renovations

Its one of the (many) mumsnet double standards.

Woman owns a house, man moves in and doesn't contribute to the mortgage/pay rent = he's a cocklodger, wants a free ride, is taking advantage.

Man owns a house, woman moves in and doesn't contribute to the mortgage/rent = sensible

B should give A a backdated invoice for their half of all the childcare fees.

The partner receiving rent from their partner has absolutely no incentive to share a mortgage in the future either. It just seems like a very heart over head decision to make for the 'renter' in the relationship.

And yet here I am, with my name on a mortgage I only have because my (now DH) had 150k equity in his property. I never begrudged paying him rent before my name was on the property. I paid a fraction more to live in his 3 bed house than I paid for my room in a shared house and wouldn't have been close to getting on the property ladder if we hadn't moved in together anyway.