Partner wants to force me to sell house

[moonstone6]

Has anyone who is not married had experience of being taken to court to try and force a sale to your house? We have a jointly owned house. He wants to sell now and split the proceeds but we have a low interest fixed rate mortgage that ends in July 25 so I want to wait till then as we'll have more equity and be penalised 18k for leaving our mortgage early. He earns more than me so selling now works for him. We've had mediation and every thing I offer as an alternative to living arrangements - mainly different nesting options he just objects to so making it pointless.

Nonsense. UK courts will generally award residency of a jointly-owned property to the custodial parent till the youngest child reaches 18.

This is categorically incorrect. This was the case in some instances up until 2005 or so, but is absolutely not the norm anymore at all in the UK.

@DeeLusional(Apt user name!) please see attached screen grabs. Both from legal websites.

@DeeLusional
your name is appropriate
that most certainly is not the case in by far the majority of cases

Oh haha hope you enjoyed your little joke, as long as you are not under the delusion that it's original.

Is the mortgage portable to another property? If so, whichever one if you is buying could take the mortgage with them at current rate and no penalty. Or you could each take an agreed share if both buying.

….does this mean you often get called delusional? 😄 (if not, what on earth do you mean?)
Plenty of posters corrected you, @DeeLusional you can’t assert facts are ‘nonsense’ and then post a lie.

I doubt you can port a mortgage in just one persons name without proving you can pay it ? It does seem the sensible option to just sell the house and start over with your own mortgages on smaller properties

Not financially it doesn't. ERC of £18,000 is not insignificant for many.

@moonstone6

See if he will agree to pay the ERC himself as he's the one in a burning hurry to sell.

Do you think he's going to be in a position to have 50/50 ??

Phoning the bank tomorrow to find out what I can do, but it's given me some hope so thanks for all those that suggested it. Also might get in touch with a financial adviser.

also the low earner thing... i'm not that much of a low earner just not a high earner! i couldn't get universal credit because I earn too much/work too many hours.

he won't pay the ERC (he won't give me anything because he thinks he's hard done by) It's not just 18k of ERC we're losing but the amount of equity we are losing paying at such a low interest rate for the next 17 months.

@mrsbyers re porting mortgage.
yes, will be assessed on affordability on how much you can borrow for new property. But should be able to port that amount (up to current mortgage level) in same product. One party would need to get the others permission if taking more than half existing mortgage balance.
Likely to also need simultaneous completion on purchase and sale.

I’m currently doing it for as much of existing mortgage I can take. EXH Is not buying straight away so not interested in the mortgage.

Op I'm not sure what you mean by 'losing equity'. Has your property value decreased since you bought it?

Yet you want him to move out and lose his kids. You even assumed that if you were married a court would make him leave.

why is it ok for him to lose his kids but not you?

I'm a little confused OP. You want to delay the sale by 16 months ish and you want to 'nest' aka rent another place during that time. So surely you will spend as much on that as you'll lose on getting out of the mortgage earlier? So is this about money or just not wanting to lose your home (which is fair enough but of course he can't be kept from his money just for that).

That’s a really odd way of the Early Repayment Charge being calculated. It’s normally a % of the total amount owed on the mortgage, and decreases year on year as a percentage, plus the amount it’s a % of decreases. Has your lender confirmed in writing that this is how they calculate the ERC? I don’t see how they can know what the equity would have been in say two years time - house prices can fluctuate a lot in that time!

OP - I am with @AllTheChaos. How are you calculating the ERC? It shouldn't be linked to the equity at all, but to what is left on the mortgage? So if your house is worth £250k and you have £150k left on the mortgage, if you had to pay 2% in ERC, that would be £3000. Your £18000 figure seems massively out of whack as you'd need a mortgage of well over £1mn.

Also, I'm not 100% sure but if you were to buy somewhere else and remain with your mortgage lender for your new mortgage, would that fee be waived?

I ported my mortgage with me when I moved and moved the mortgage to the new house.

abd tes, redemption usually based in I testers on the % of mortgage balance remaining

I think the erpis based on the amount of interest they charge you. Total profit for length of fixed rate period. Mines didn’t reduce annually so had a 10k erp all the way through the fixed 5 year mortgage.

18k ERC for a fixed rate mortgage that ends next year sounds huge, are you sure that is correct? You’d have to be in a very high value house for that kind of charge. Living together for another couple of years when you’re no longer a couple and there is such disdain for each other sounds awful for everyone. The sale would be forced in court , eating into any equity there is, solicitors fees for you both would soon reach 18k. It’s probably in your best interests to sell up now and start fresh.

I've worked in mortgages for years and have never heard of ERC being calculated in any other way than "percentage of outstanding mortgage balance".

Eg. Mortgage balance is £100k, ERC is 5% at start of year 1 = £5000. ERC drops to 4% y2 = £4k, 3% y3 = £3k, 2% y4 = £2k, and 1% in the final year = £1k.

Some have fixed ERC where it stays the same for the term of the mortgage deal, some longer or different increments.

I don't understand how they can base anything on potential equity as this is simply not guaranteed.

Eg. Mortgage balance is £100k, ERC is 5% at start of year 1 = £5000. ERC drops to 4% y2 = £4k, 3% y3 = £3k, 2% y4 = £2k, and 1% in the final year = £1k.

Hence the question as to if your mortgage is HUGE - If you have 2 years max remaining and the ERC reduces, it's likely to be 2% - this indicates if the ERC is £18k your mortgage is £900k.

Either way, op can't afford the mortgage and will be required to sell the home so the maths is irrelevant really.

Sure, but if the mortgage is £900k, it's very unlikely that the equity is only £40k. At time of purchase, if requiring a £900k mortgage, there would need to be a significant deposit put down (I would think MINIMUM 10% but realistically more like 20-30%), which would now be equity plus whatever they've managed to pay off. Unless the house has massively dropped in value, which, in this market, seems unlikely.

So either way, OP's calculations don't seem to make sense and I suspect (and hope, for her sake) it's a calculation error.

Actually, I just had a thought - OP, is it your ex who is claiming you'd only get a small amount out after fees etc? Is he trying to screw you on this? Did he put down the original deposit so he thinks he should be getting all of that back?

MASSIVE dripfeed... plus you then chose to have kids with him.

@moonstone6

OK, had caffeine now.

i had assumed you had called the bank to ask how much you'd have to pay in ERC, or at the very least calculated that yourself.

you're confusing yourself, or he is misleading you on these figures.

you NEED to ring the bank & ask the outstanding balance & what your current ERC would be.

i think you're seeing the equity as something it's not. It's simply how much (after costs) you get from selling the house & what's left after paying the mortgage off (including the ERC & any other expenses).

so yes you'd get more equity in 18 months (or whatever) because there wouldn't be the ERP. But your mortgage would be lower (as you'll be paying it for the next 18 months)
you need to find out the actual figures, because it may not make that much difference & a lot less hassle to do it now.

you need to work out if you can afford to buy him out & if he'll agree to allow you to port the mortgage solely, you'll still have to prove to the bank you can pay that in your own name, but at least you'll get the benefit if the cheaper rate. But you'll need to be able to show the bank you can afford it at the current rate in 18 months.

GET ALL THE INFORMATION DIRECTLY FROM THE BANK not him!!

Yes. I think you should be checking with the bank because this all sounds very odd and it might just be that you're misunderstanding but it could be as sinister as him purposefully providing you with incorrect information.

The equity in your house is whatever is left when you sell it after you've paid off the bank (outstanding mortgage plus any early repayment fees). So, in our case, our house is worth about £550k and we have an outstanding mortgage amount of around £280k so, we have equity of £270k (bit less if we had to pay off an early repayment fee and I guess there would be other fees like estate agents etc that we'd have to pay which would reduce the amount we'd see in our bank account at the end of a sale).

Now, if me or DP wanted to massively complicate the split should we separate, there could be discussions about who paid in more in the beginning or whether we should be basing the split of equity on the current price or on a percentage based on who has paid in more over the years. Ie I paid the original deposit and have paid 2/3 of the mortgage over the years, so should I get 2/3 of the equity? As we're married, have children, and have lived here for 15 years, my answer to that would be - no. But if I was a wanker and trying to make life for difficult for DH at the time of a divorce, I might try to convince him I should. Hopefully the courts would simply laugh at me in that situation and the house would be split 50/50.