Advice for inheritance and living

[SniggleSnarf]

Hello
My colleague has had a lump sum of money from an elderly relative. The relative originally said it was to help buy a house as colleague has been renting for a long time.

Colleague is mid 50s
No assets
Works around 30hours a week

She rents a flat at £800 a month, but the rent is going to be put up in October.

She would have loved to put a deposit down but is worried she won't be accepted for a mortgage.
She has also thought about buying a mobile home and just living in it for as many months of the year as she can.

The inheritance was just over 50k.

Just wondering if anyone has any advice that I can pass on.

Thanks for reading

Do not go for a mobile home! They are a terrible asset, depreciate really badly, often have very restrictive terms on the parks/land it is on in terms of when you can and can't live there, when you have to replace the unit etc etc. Just generally a bad idea for someone to put their only savings/asset into.

She should see a mortgage broker to see if she would be accepted for a mortgage - the size of the deposit is one factor but she then needs to look at what the type of house/flat she wants to buy would cost and how that relates to her income, normally lenders won't lend more than 4.5 x your income, so if say she earns £20k at the moment, she could borrow max £90k, that plus her deposit will mean her budget is £140k, I'm in a more expensive than average area but you'd get a reasonable 1 bed flat for that around here. Obviously her age is a factor too plus her credit rating and any other outgoings, but she needs to speak to a broker really - remember also to factor in conveyancing and moving costs which will need to come out of the budget if she has no other savings. But I don't think she should totally give up hope of being able to buy. Shared ownership may also be an option? I guess she does need to think about whether she wants to tie herself in to a mortgage until very close to retirement age although a small mortgage of roughly the amount mentioned above will be less pcm than £800 so she could overpay if she wanted to to reduce the term.

If buying does turn out not to be an option, she can still invest the money wisely to give her some security for the future, I would recommend looking at putting it into a pension scheme particularly if you have a favourable workplace pension that allows you to make additional contributions. Otherwise she could start a private pension, or also start an ISA?