Feeling guilt at costing my parents £00000k

[Tead]

About 12 years my parents came into some money and were all set to buy a buy to let house until I talked them out of it. The are immigrants and so look to me to explain things - I know that sounds odd.
i thought it would be too much of a hassle for them as they were in their early 60s but I knew nothing of property.
they changed their minds and just left the money in the bank.
the house sold 3 months ago and I am racked with guilt over what I did. They would have made hundreds thousands on their purchase. It’s been 3 months and I keep waking up at night thinking about my stupidity. I haven’t told anyone about this not even my wife. I have felt close to tears many times. I know I cannot make it us to them. This just makes me feel like an even bigger loser. I haven’t spoken to them about this. I feel ashamed of myself just looking at them. They are financially ok but I feel like I’ve failed them

Ultimately they didn't have to leave it in cash or rely on your advice they could have seen a financial adviser.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but they could have invested in it and then found it too stressful for all you know.

I am sorry you feel this way. It sounded like you advised the best you could at the time. You had their best interests at heart and they can't fault you for this. You sound like you are being over harsh in yourself and I think you need to be kinder to yourself. If it is keeping you up at night, maybe talk to them about how you are feeling?

You may also have saved them years of stress dealing with a bad tenant who may have damaged the house, not paid rent, court proceedings to evict a bad tenant too . Don't underestimate how stressful it can be to be a good landlord complying with all the legislation and offering a property at a fair rent for it all to go wrong because of a bad tenant. Your original advice regarding the hassle remains good.

Don't be so hard on yourself.

As has been said, hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I'm looking at a BTL in central London where prices are down 15-29% since 2015. Your parents would also have had to pay capital gains tax when selling a second property. Plus the stamp duty in buying (which is an additional 3% for BTL properties). Plus any costs in getting it ready to rent and maintenance if things broke.

Hopefully that makes you feel a bit better about the profit forgone...

Sorry, typo, 15-20%

Your parents still have some choices in all of this, you’re not wholly responsible. It’s a lot to take on to be your parents adviser in such important decisions, they should have consulted someone professional and hired a translator if necessary. Don’t beat yourself up about it. Perhaps have a chat with them and if they still have some money left advise them to see a mortgage advisor or someone similar to help them make financial decisions. Tell them you maybe feel guilty and see what they say. There is more to family and life than financial success, they might not be as bothered as you think. And if they are, then I’d go back to the thought that maybe it was too much responsibility for you and they should have looked elsewhere for that kind of life guidance. What credibility did you have back then other than speaking better English?

I wouldn’t be racked over guilt at not buying this specific house.

However YABU for thinking that money in the bank , sat there for 12 years, would appreciate in value - if they weren’t going to buy the house, what other investment advice did you give?

Leaving money in the bank doesn’t grow money. I’m not saying property was the best option either if you felt it would be too much hassle, but there are plenty of other investment vehicles, even a FTSE tracker on Hargreaves Lansdown or whatever.

the problem is, many folk in the UK with a bit of spare cash always think of property in the first instance because few people “trust” other forms of investing and “there’s nothing safer than bricks and mortar , you always make money”. 🙄

But forget all I typed above - you’re not responsible for your parents decision, you didn’t lose them money, and they still have a chance to buy a property if you feel in reflection that’s the best choice

YANBU

Well maybe they won't know or realise that it has made so much money? You have obviously been following the sale of the house.

Don't beat yourself up, I mean, you lost your inheritance too no?

They made the decision, not you. They look to you for advice but it was their decision to do that. You gave advice in good faith.

Buy to let is a huge responsibility and I've known people have massive problems with it - a friend of mine rented her house to someone who put in a cannabis farm, wrecked the place and she was left with police involvement and huge bills to sort it all out. Someone else bought a flat to rent out and is tangled up in a legal case with the other freeholders that makes it unsaleable. I think if they didn't have the confidence to make that decision themselves, it would have been the wrong decision to buy.

You can learn from this; just because your parents ask advice from you, you don't have to give it, or the advice can be to get advice from someone else! They chose to burden you with that request and they chose not to buy. And everything is fine, they are not suffering, they have the money.

Can I suggest you see your GP and request some CBT for an external perspective and to help you get over this? I promise that you will get over it, and you should.

Whilst I think it was odd advice to give, they are their own people and made the decision themselves.

Lets be honest, they must be in their 70s or approaching 80 by now. They are unlikely to have benefitted hugely by the property increase. They would probably still be living there.

The person/people more likely to benefit from the rise in prices would be you and any siblings and grandchild, when they die. Unless they needed care. Then you may not have done.

Is the money still there just say in the bank? Or are they spending it to improve their lives?

I think you were wrong to talk them out of something they wanted to do - there's a line between giving advice when asked for and actively talking someone out of a decision.

But what's done is done. No point agonising over it. Your parents must be in their 70s or 80s now? I doubt this decision will be affecting them significant. The people who will be more affected are you and any siblings you have as you'd stand to inherit their assets!

Look, we all make choices all of the time.

You can let the ones that aren't the wisest eat you up, or you don't. It's just another choice.

There's a saying that I find helpful. We all do the best we can with the knowledge and understanding we had at the time.

Try thinking more like that. Your parents still have the initial money, they haven't lost anything. Anything they have lost was hypothetical. What you can't factor in are the ongoing expenses, the stress of bad tenants, the fact the boiler may have needed replacing, and the roof, and the carpets and so on.

Let it go dude.

You didn't do anything wrong.
There are loads of more ethical things to do sith a big investment - they could have fone all sorts of things that made them money without the issues and risks of buy to let.

A lot of people consider buy to let unethical because it traps more people into renting. Each buy to let purchase pushes up house prices and blocks some people from getting on the housing ladder, thereby increasing the number of people who need to rent and thus benefitting the rich at the expense of the poor. Obviously some rental property is needed but it ought to be more regulated to balance supply and demand in favour of the less advantaged.

But even so not everyone who joins the buy to let gravy train makes lots of money. You can never know what would have happened but some tenants can be an absolute nightmare, properties can need unexpected maintenance and repairs. Being a landlord can be a lot of stress. You are feeling guilty about the loss of a very rose-tinted view of what their experience might have been. It could have been awful.

Don't worry about this specific lost opportunity. Encourage them to invest their money across a half-dozen or so different opportunities with a range of risk to reward categories - it's always the case that the bigger the potential rewards, the higher the chances that it could go wrong and end up losing money instead, so it's good to keep some money in safer but less profitable options but take risks with smaller amounts because sometimes the risks pay off.

Could have gone the other way too. Don't give yourself a hard time.

You gave them advice they asked for that you thought was right. If it turned out not to be, that's just hindsight and back luck. It's also on your parents as they could have decided for themselves.

I was a landlord for years and it’s really stressful especially if you have stroppy tenants. I wouldn’t have wanted this for you parents

loke somebody said unthread, they wouldn’t have coped if they did not have the confidence to make the decision themselves, or the wisdom to sort to a financial advisor about it

They may have made a fortune. They may have had years of stress with a bad tenant, an empty property or sold at a loss.

Landlords are dumping their stock rapidly in my city. The council has been thought of buying them at rock bottom prices.

My friend had a tenant who destroyed his property.

They may have had good long standing tenant and then had to evict them to sell.

Being a landlord sounds so stressful. I think you did the right thing.

Try to forgive yourself for making a choice based on what you thought was right at the time.
Learn from it. And let it go. All easier said than done I know.
What is this experience teaching you? Think about that. How is feeling guilty helping your parents right now?
Think about the future, heal the past.

Are they terribly hard up now?

You have done nothing wrong. You tried to help them. You were not to know. You might have advised them to buy and then dreadful things might have happened as a result. Of course you now know it would have been better for them to buy, but who knows why things happen. You can only move forward. You sound like an amazingly caring son, and one any parent would be so grateful for ❤️

Eh, a bit of both.

YABU to think house prices wouldn't absolutely sky rocket over the last twelve years. Anyone who didn't see that coming definitely shouldn't be giving anyone any kind of advice. It's also insane to think that leaving that money in a bank account was the best thing to do. You did give them truly awful advice.

That said, YANBU - it's not your responsibility to sort their finances and they're grown adults who should seek proper advice. Furthermore, if they rely on you to tell them whether or not to buy a house then they couldn't possibly run a successful buy-to-let so God only knows what sort of mess they'd have got themselves into. They can't possibly be as incompetent as you've presented them to be in your post - they're immigrants, they aren't stupid.

So, all in all, they should be getting advice from someone who knows what they're talking about and you shouldn't be advising on things you know nothing about. It's a bit of both.

You need to let it go. It was bad advice but you acted in good faith. Let it be a lesson for the future that you need to seek advice if it’s something you know nothing about and involves a lot of money.

The problem is that you’re talking about external factors that are unpredictable. The 12 years just gone would have been a good time to own a property, but other periods wouldn’t have been. A lot of the sold value of the property could have come from the last 3 years, and it all depends when you sell it anyway. So yes, they could have bought, but sold at a different time and not made anything.

eg we bought in 2006, sold 2011 and are less than £5k from that period (3% of property price), bought in 2011 and sold 2019 and made £100k (17%) of the price. Our current house went up about 30% on asking price at the peak (in 2 years) but is likely on the way down again, and we have had to make a big cash investment in terms of renovating so our ‘profit’ on this house would not be as high as house 2.

I do think that if it were just that it would have been hard to deal with that you could have helped with that, especially as presumably any investment they make may ultimately benefit you.

but then again, they could have bought/sold/made a ton of money and then had really high care fees in old age. None of this is wholly predictable.

Just re-read the OP and saw that they didn't ask for your advice but you butted in and talked them out of it. Yeah, sorry OP, YABU.