Simply don't know what to do.

[Cantgiveitaway]

4 years ago we inherited a house. It has been on the market for the entirety of that time. It is on sale for approx 25% of market value. Reasons below:

The property is non-standard construction and therefore unmortgagable (we have explored this extensively).

It has a sitting lifetime tenancy on a peppercorn rent. Tenant is in their 70s and in good health.

We cannot sell it due to the above.

For those unaware, lifetime tenants cannot be evicted and the rent is very tightly controlled. We have increased it to the maximum allowed every year for the 4 years we've owned it. It still doesn't constitute £1000 a year.

We do not have any more money to put in to the property. We've done the legal required stuff. We've explored legal avenues for eviction ABD offered to give (gift) the property to the sitting tenant.

We basically need someone to come along with enough money to keep the property legally for 20+ years before they can do anything with it.

The most recent gas and electricity safety checks and the EPC have shown significant work needed in the next 12 months to keep it legal. We can't do it. Our only option is to sell our home that we, move in to a much smaller property in a different area (moving children's schools and away from family) and renting ourselves.

We have 0 savings because of the house and cannot afford basic things for our own home.

I just don't know what to do.

WWYD? We literally cannot give it away - we offered it to the LA and to a social landlord and a landlord with an extensive portfolio in the area and all said no.

In 20years, when the tenant dies or moves in to care the land might be worth something (and therefore sellable) but we can't wait that long. We had absolutely no idea the property existed until we inherited it and I've no idea why we did.

Any out of the box thinking here from the hive mind?

No, they wouldn't. We could end up with ccjs etc.

It's like there is no good option here.

We just need to give it away, but as my name suggests, it's not that easy!

Location, size, tenant, rent all play a part.

Actually there is a way to force the council to take it off you if you genuinely can prove that you can't afford to do the maintenance they are trying to force you to do.
But it's not an easy process and you need proper legal advice about whether you are actually in a position to do this. Because it is one thing not wanting to pay for repairs and quite another genuinely not being able to afford it.
It comes under impossibility to pay and if you can get that accepted you can potentially walk away. If you've been trying to resolve this for 4 years, I'm surprised nobody has mentioned it to you before if you've got legal advice.

I’m really sorry you are stuck in such an awful predicament.

I know you have sought legal advice, and it’s all money, but have you tried the very best legal advice?

That's the thing, impossibility to pay means practically bankrupting ourselves. At what point do we get to keep some of our money? In April DH was made redundant. Thankfully he got a new job quickly, but we had 0 emergency fund. If our boiler goes in this house, or the roof leaks, we'd have to put it on credit cards to pay for it.

I really feel for you. It's a really horrible situation.
You really need legal advice as to what you must do and what you can claim you can't afford. I'm not sure you can be forced to put the repairs on a credit card. But obviously if you have assets or savings this can be expected to be used I suppose. The question is legally how much can you actually be forced to pay - and that may be something you need to risk testing in court. Although there are costs involved in that too - a completly horrible situation to be in.

You used to be able to do this. Not sure now - but presumably it is possible?

You can but there are unsurprisingly rules to follow - has to be whole gift and before ownership is transferred.

But as the property now in Op or partners name and they've paid for repairs and taken rent they can not now.

They need to try and off load any way they can now - which OP knows - but they also need to try and protect their other assets in mean time or long term if can't off load.

At worst that may mean seperating finances or trying to set up some kind of Limited Liability Company - then selling property to that company which can trigger Capital Gains Tax and Stamp Duty Land Tax in the UK - they'd need legal advice about if possible and how.

At this point I'd be being very blunt with them and telling them that the property is unsafe to live in and you're not going to be doing the work to make it safe, because you can't afford to. That even if they take you to court you still won't get the work done and nor will they get any compensation, because you'll apply for bankruptcy.

Do councils still have the power to insist on repairs and impose penalties on landlords who don't comply? A friend's father was an EHO specialising in housing disrepair and he loved issuing repair notices to landlords. If they didn't comply, they would get a financial penalty that increased the longer it took for the LL to get the work done.

If it's an old tenancy, those rules might still apply and could get the OP into an even deeper financial hole.

There's a lot of misunderstanding on this thread!

If I were you:

1. Approach all of the neighbours with a £1 offer.
2. Every auction house going - especially Bid X who will sell anything
3. Contact every we buy any property type
4. Check with all alternative lenders & see if they'll give you a life loan type facility where they lend you enough to cover potential costs for the nexrt 20 years; you pay nothing & they sell the house when tenant dies to repay the debt

I'd be playing dirty, introduce a rat infestation or something, push her out.

I came to say the exact same thing! Gift it to him!

I'm 71 and not only would I know where to start, I'd be bloody well determined to do it if I had a secure tenancy at a peppercorn rent! And if I didn't know, I'd know how to find out what my rights and options were, too.

We don't all lose our marbles the minute we hit 70, ffs.

The OP has already said he does not want it
Face it, if you could live for 700 odd quid a year and have all maintenance paid for. Would you move?
He has them over a barrell.

You absolutely can get a mortgage on a non standard construction house. I know because DH and I owned one, it was our first home and we had a mortgage with Virgin no issues at all. So whoever told you that is lying. The lifelong tenant thing is weird, I have never heard of this but I think this is the main issue making the property undesirable. I’d try auction again.

Oh don’t understand why this hasn’t been snapped up, anyone with any financial nouse would surely be able to speculate to accumulate and see the value of buying, upkeep for the current tenant and then sell the land in years to come?

So every mortgage company we approached lied to us?

Difference is, you lived in it. We'd need a btl mortgage, which has different requirements, like a 125% rent to mortgage ratio.

They've also changed the mortgage requirements on non-standard construction properties in the last X years, and there are different types of non - standard construction.

So no, no one was lying and we can't get a mortgage on it.

And if the property were to become unsafe, the landlord would have a legal duty to carry out whatever repairs were necessary to make it safe.

So sorry you are in this situation OP. I used to be a housing inspector in Environmental Health many years ago and landlords in financial difficulty was a common problem, particularly when expensive upkeep and repairs were required. From what I can remember there was a different wing of our dept that could assist private sector landlords in financial need and there were some grants available but that was a long time ago now (over 10 years) and might not still be applicable. Have you made an appointment with you local authority housing team? If you can get in front of someone face to face, maybe there is some help/ advice they can offer.

I’m sure you will have done this already but there seem to be a few ‘we buy any house’ companies out there. Just did a search and one said they take properties with sitting tenants.

Sorry this must be so stressful for you

Walk me through the process. No Googling allowed, seeing as you already know where to report.

Have you looked in detail at how you hold the property legally? I don't think your responsibilities here are akin to those of normal landlords and so there is some stuff that you seem to be paying for which is maybe not your problem.

My understanding of life interests in property is that they are held under a trust structure. Who are the trustees here? The role of the trustees is to mediate and balance the interests of the life tenant and the remainderman (in this case, you/your DH).

The life tenant should be paying for routine upkeep of the property, not the remainderman. They must maintain the property in the general condition it was in when their life interest started. So this is on them, not you.

If there are major structural repairs needed, this is the responsibility of the trustees, not the remainderman. Did you agree to be trustees?

The remainderman is not a landlord and does not have the legal obligations to upkeep the property that a landlord has.

Have you taken competent legal advice on whether you are actually landlords?

It's a tiny patch of land, possibly 15x20meters at the absolute most, it has a path out the front and is 30 meters from the road. Pita to get materials to and unlikely to get 2 storey permission on it. Maybe be worth something in another area, but not where it is. Local estate agents were a bit challenged to value it really and we basically said try and get anything at all for us. It would probably cost close to it's value to repair, wait 20 years, demolish and rebuild (that's what one company we approached said) so would be net zero for someone. Hardly a tempting prospect 🤣

Most 70 year olds can use the internet to find this out when needed. The tenant isn't some senile old idiot. They might have some kind of SEN but they aren't stupid

Yes we have and we are responsible.

On the face of it that doesn't seem reasonable, the cap should be lifted if you've increased the rental value by 15% even if there is more work to be done, unless I'm missing something. Might be worth a conversation with your solicitor about appealing. Easier if the last increase was within the last 28 days but still possible to appeal if not

I will look in to appealing.