Cohabiting - how do you pay "rent" to your partner when he owns the house?

[yayforspring]

Hi all

Im hoping to move in with OH in about 6 months. He has just bought a house and is expecting me to contribute, and I was planning on doing so. I currently pay £540 inc rent and bills in a shared house. His mortgage on a 2 bed place is £1300 a month plus bills (prob £250). Im not sure how I should pay him. I thought initially I would just pay him £540, to keep outgoings the same for me, as its not my property. I wouldnt get a whole room to myself as such although if we were renting together I'd be paying a lot more. I would be technically paying off his mortgage, but if i dont contribute I'd have no say in things and wouldnt feel it was my home. He wants a bit more than £540, i think about £600. I wondered whether I could just pay him £540, and then pay the rest of my half of everything into a savings account for us to use in the future if we stay together (ie for the next house) so that things were really equal. Anyone else in the same situation? what is the normal thing to do?

@badguider

When I moved in with my DH (bf at the time) he was adamant that living with him wouldn't make me worse off. So I paid him what I'd been paying before. I didn't have an equal stake in the flat and he paid all the maintenance and furniture. If it had gone wrong I'd have moved out no worse off than when I arrived or if I'd been in his second bedroom as a lodger. That's how I wanted it and worked for us.

I don't think there's a 'right' answer. Some people will say he shouldn't ask you for anything 'if he loves you' and others will say everything should be equal. It's up to you what you're happy with.

But you living with him made HIM better off, if you paid towards his mortgage. And he makes himself seem all reasonable by saying "Oh, no, I definitely don't want you to be worse off by living with me." He WOULD say that, wouldn't he, from the comfort of an easier financial position for himself?

I'm glad things worked out for you and you now have an equal share in everything, through marriage, but what about people for whom it DOESN'T end in marriage, and sharing of the equity?

What a waste of fecking time. I wish zombie threads would be highlighted as such in the thread title the minute someone adds to it 2 years later or whatever.

£1300 mortgage on a 2 bed place?! I hope this is London. If you’re not going on the mortgage then I’d only contribute towards 50% of the household costs. He’s not your landlord so why should you pay his mortgage? If you break up in the future then all you will have done is helped him to pay it off without any share in it yourself.

Don't pay rent. Pay your share of the mortgage once your name is on it.

We have always each put 33% of our takehome pay (whatever amount) into the house kitty. As it was a percentage we both contributed the same as it were.

Kitty covers mortgages and bills any excess going into the overpayment/big spends/holiday fund. As our wages grew over time and the overpayments increased our outgoings dropped dramatically.

Now only one of us needs to work at any time to cover the outgoings and 33% rule still applies.

This sounds great.... but the thread and my experience are that this set up is just not acceptable to the owning party. My situation is even worse, where 15yrs of paying partner rent for a home ge has already paid mortgage on as he says I'd be renting anyway. He now went out me come in on new house purchase as I cant nat h him cash fir cash. Of course I cant I've been paying him rent for 15 years rather than saving that money to go towards a house. His belief is this is fair . . And I should be hopeful that when my parents die I may inherit enough to buy in. Seriously......