For asking to be put on the mortgage?

[Isthismykarma]

Posting for friend.

Friend has been with her DP for 2 years, she moved into his place 1 year ago. Not married, no children. Before that friend lived at home with parents.

Her DP has a shared ownership owning 70% of the property and 30% owned by a housing association that rent is paid to. Her DP pays the mortgage and they split the rent and bills. Because of this friend has managed to save a chunk of money.

Her DP eventually wants to buy more shares of the property but has never mentioned my friend being a part of this. He saves a little every month but realistically wouldn’t be able to mortgage the whole property even if he did get enough of a deposit to (need 5% of the remaining value).

Friend was wondering if it’s cheeky to ask him if she could be put on his mortgage then she would happily put down the money for the deposit and they can jointly own the whole property - no more paying rent. They could speak to somebody who can help them ring fence her DPs current equity and her deposit and then pay the remaining mortgage 50/50.

YABU - this should be led by her DP and she will see grabby
YANBU - it makes sense

A fairer setup would be for her to pay half of what a similar property costs to rent in that area, not half of the rent on 30% of the property! Plus half of bills.

That's what she'd be paying if she'd moved in with someone who rents, rather than someone who owns. And that's what he'd charge a flat-sharer who wasn't his partner.

He's being very generous.

I thought general advice was to not pay a partners/let a partner pay your mortgage. If things went sour, and my friend had contributed towards mortgage payments or improvements to the property she could potentially have a claim on the house from a legal standpoint which would make her DP vulnerable (I don’t think in a million years she would do this but still not a good move from her DP perspective).
From her side too, if was renting somewhere else or was a lodger she would have all of the legal protections which she wouldn’t have if she was paying her partner informally. She could come back one day and all her stuff be on the drive.
Also her DP would be essentially profiting from her living there, as shed be paying into the equity of his home and be receiving the return off it. It then creates a weird landlord-tenant relationship and less like a partnership. I wouldn’t ever advise somebody to do what you’re asking, it’s too unfair on both sides and tricky from a legal standpoint.

Some weird misinformation/misunderstandings on this thread. What the 'friend' is proposing isn't grabby at all, she's not asking to be given half the house, her partner's equity in the property would be protected whilst she would be agreeing to invest money of her own into the property and share the debt/mortgage, sounds reasonable to me, if they were looking to buy a new property together that would be absolutely normal. Not that complicated legally either, they'd be tenants in common with a deed of trust setting out the equity split, perfectly normal and common arrangement.

As OP doubtless knows as a mortgage advisor it's not quite as simple as being 'added to the mortgage', particularly as it's a shared ownership property, they'd have to take out a new joint mortgage and do some conveyancing to buy the part of the house that currently belongs to the housing association, so the DP might well want to wait until his current fixed term mortgage expires before making any changes particularly if he secured a good interest rate before they spiralled but that doesn't mean it's not worth talking about now to enable sensible planning. Yes the DP would I suppose be risking not being able to secure another comparable property in the event of a break-up but equally he'd be benefitting from no longer having to deal with the housing association which will make the property much easier to sell on should they ever need to, plus the equity/capital growth on the 30% of the house he would now jointly own rather than having to pay rent on. So swings, roundabouts etc.

It's also a bit odd that people are saying 2 years is too soon to have this conversation when on other threads MNetters are frothing about a man's lack of commitment if he isn't proposing within 6 months and stories abound about how MNetters moved in with their now-DH after one date and have been married 60 million years or whatever. If the DP doesn't want to commit to that extent or even talk about doing it in the future then fine, the friend can look to her own financial security separately but as adults in a grown up relationship that have discussed kids and marriage surely the time is coming to discuss finances and the longer term plan in a sensible and cooperative way?

Well this is not quite right though. It's actually quite difficult to prove beneficial interest in a property as a co-habitee, simply paying the owner a monthly sum as 'rent' isn't usually enough, as a minimum you'd usually have to show you've contributed to maintenance or improvement of the property with a capital sum, and even then you'd often only get back what to you put in rather than a % ownership of the house and therefore a right to profit from capital growth. And also if she was a lodger in someone else's house she'd have no legal rights or tenancy protections at all really. So from that point of view it wouldn't be totally unreasonable for the partner/boyfriend to say she ought to be paying him in 'rent' what it would cost her to rent a room as a lodger locally, which has the added benefit of being tax free for him up to £625 per month plus her share of bills. This is what my partner and I did when he initially moved into my house which still worked out as a good deal for him compared to renting a flat solo. Not saying they need to make a change of course if they're happy with their current financial arrangement and sounds like the friend is being very sensible saving the extra money towards their joint future anyway so it's all effectively in the same pot regardless, but for strict accuracy and for anyone considering this sort of arrangement it's not true that a live-in partner who is not a co-owner of the house can't contribute at all without being deemed to have some kind of 'rights' over the property in future...

Thanks for your perspective, some really helpful advice on this thread it’s made me think! With my ex everything was 50/50 and I’ve just got my own little flat, not sure how I’d split things if I moved in a new partner in the future so it’s interesting to hear these takes :)

I was just replying to the part about splitting the bills and mortgage because it’s something nobody in the situation had considered as unfair so I found it interesting. Why would she mind?

Too early to combine assets, should do this in parallel with getting married, but certainly before kids.