My life feels like the most important game of monopoly at the minute.
I've inherited a third of a house which I've just had valued today at 140-145k. I've also inherited 20k cash.
So I have the choice of taking the cash and we put the property on the market and I get a third of the sales figure minus estate agent costs.
Or I offer the other parties 90k for their shares. Give them the 20k cash and get a mortgage for 70k.
Mortgage repayments would be approx 400-430 a month. We could rent the house out for £550 and that's priced to rent and I think it would rent out quickly from the location. I actually know two people who have seriously said they want to rent it if I buy it.
So I'm left with approx £100-150 a month "profit" out of which I'd have to pay landlord insurance, building insurance, tax and put anything left over to one side for repairs.
We wouldn't use a letting agent and on the plus side dh is very handy so apart from gas and elec he could fix stuff that went wrong. We'd have to get gas certificates done for the house as well prior to renting.
Doesn't really leave a lot and to be honest I am looking at it more long term. In 20 years the mortgage would be paid off and the money would then be profit apart from repairs and tax. I'd be 57yo then and I view it as a pension. I am going to get an ok nhs pension but not till I'm 67 and I don't think I can do my job till 67. So its kind of my one opportunity to possibly retire early.
But I worry about repair costs, tennants not paying, me being out of pocket if they don't pay rent or I can't rent it out for periods.
There's also the fact that although we're currently ok off financially we're not rolling in it and having a bit of extra money in the bank would be really good. I've currently got about 4k savings, dh has a bit more and we have a tiny (30k) mortgage. But we do live quite frugally, don't go out for meals, I rarely buy clothes, I save £100 a month but apart from that I spend all my wages. Dh manages to save a bit more.
It would be nice to think we could maybe take the caravan to France instead of to Yorkshire. Not going mad, but just little things like that. Try and save as much of the capital as possible in the best account I could find and not touch much of it. I'm fairly confident that in 20 years time I could still have at least 50k of it untouched.....but 50k capital isn't going to let me retire ten years early.
So live for the moment and enjoy life a bit more or be really sensible and spend the next 20 years scrimping for a longer term gain? Dh is 50yo by the way and doesn't have a private pension.