to keep buy-to-let investment OR sell it, not stuggle anymore and recieve housing beneift?

[thenewgirl]

what do you think you would do?

(following on from another thread)

dh is contemplating a change of career which means halving his salary AND giving up the house the comes with his current job, so a huge downgrade of lifestyle.

we have decided to really go for it as it is his dream job and life comes before money.

so the dilema is....
having recieved advice on the kind of help we would recieve while dh is on such a low salary (wouldnt be forever, maybe 5 years) we have been told that we would recieve £100 per week in child tax credit but also, to my amazment, we would be entitled to £500-£600 per month in housing benefit to pay rent with.

the problem is that last year we bought a buy-to-let house as a long term investment, we took a big loan from my parents in order to pay for the deposit. in the last year we have managed to pay back nearly half of it so we do in effect own some of the house we bought, (but only a tiny bit really)

I see the house as a bit of a white elephant, in that we obviously would not get any housing benefit if we own a house. so we would really struggle and have to deal with the stress and costs of ownng a buy-to-let in order to, maybe, have a long long term investment but I can't see that it will make us the £500-£600 in housing benefit that we would get if we didnt own it.

If we sold it we would probably break even, taking into account all the costs and early get-out-of mortgage fees.

if we sell it then we wouldnt struggle anywhere near in the same way but we would be losing our long long term security.

what do you think?

Does you dh have earning potential in this new career?

I would try to keep it if you possibly could.

Is there any way, if you eg have a tenant on a tenany agreement - you can say that you can't just evict them to move in? If so surely you would be entitled to housing benefit?

I don't know enough about this and it is only an idea.

My friend recently was on a full time course (degree) to become a mental health nurse. In between lectures she managed to sign on with an agency doing care work 'on the bank' and earned quite a lot of money as and when it suited her.

Good luck

If you can afford to keep it then do. It's security for the future - our pensions are going to be shit.

dh is unlikely to ever earn what he earns now, he wants to be a paramedic (been shortlisted) and top top earers get no more than £30, he gets about that now,and a free house! but it's his dream...

we just dont know what it's like to struggle, and although dead keen to give it a go and we both believe that money isnt important to us, but we have had no rent or bills in 5 years and now have 3 kids, so are we kidding ourselves?

willmouse, I have been told that if you have equity in a house over £6000 then you simply don't qualify, and rightly so I guess, it's just that ours equity isn't 'real' iyswim, as is is borrowed.

any more thoughts?

If you were to sell the house, how much equity would you have (outright, after repaying the loan from your parents)? Savings are taken into account when looking at means-tested benefits.

Also the benefits agency might want to know why you are selling a property and then renting. They look very carefully at disposal of capital as it is unlawful to dispose of capital in order to qualify for benefit.

Go to CAB and get some specific advice before you get rid of the house and then find out that you aren't entitled to any benefits as a result.

I would be very careful in taking gospel word on housing benefit and council tax benefit.

My DH was medically discharged from the army in August, we are currently in receipt of

Tax Credits
Child Benefit
Incapacity Benefit (when they pull their finger out and pay us!)
Small pension sum monthly

And as a result we are only entitled to £13 a week housing benefit and 13pence council tax benefit total until end of march!

We were also told we would get full HB and CTB but obviously not!

Personally, from experience, please dont put money on the fact you will deffo get full HB

interesting...

it would be a total guess but I can't see that we would walk away with any more than a few thousand.
in terms of getting rid of capital to claim benefits, it would be easy enough to prove that as dh's job changed we simply couldn't afford to keep the house going. and buy-to-let mortgages mean you can't live in the house yourself.
jarm that must have been quite a shock for you. can I ask how you are managing? is it terribly hard or have you managed to adjust to it?

sell , it is a stress you don't need atm. What if it lay vacant for a while ?

if it lay vacant?
then it would break us!
well, we certainly would feel the stress.

its not easy, i can tell you that much.

We are currently living on £70 a week with 2 under 4 and i am 33wks pregnant.

Roll on early next year when I can go back to work. Dh is not able to work so it will be my responsibility.

You adjust though, just means you cant have what you want when you want it.

I have just done entitledto.com again with proper figures and it is still saying I should be getting £50odd a week HB and £20odd a week CTB - so i dont trust it - either that or the local council here are diddling me!

I agree with Jarm. I would be very careful with calculating benefits. I have dramitically changed my cicumstances - decisions were made based on the whether we would be able to afford it with the temporary help from benefits and only after the applications have been processed have they told me that I am not entitled to a bean. I only found out today and am really upset about the whole thing.

I was given wrong advice from Jobs Centre, Inland Rev and CAB.

I'm sorry empen that is awful, really lousy that that can happen. but thankyou for your advice. I hope it works out for you.