Occupational Rent

[ConflictedHedgeHug]

Hi All

Another question to settle my mind a little on an ongoing issue and help support and advise my long suffering partner..

Occupational rent.

Is anybody in receipt of it, or paying it?

As I understand it if you own a property with somebody but either you or they are unable to live there, or actively prevented from living there, the person unable to have use and/or access to their property can be paid a proportional rent based on the market rentable value and their share of ownership.

This also is reliant on them keeping up their end of things in terms of any repayments.

These payments can sometimes be offset against this rent, so the person with the occupational benefit of living there and not having to pay alternative rent or mortgage to live somewhere else covers more or all of the bills along with the upkeep to keep the property in good order.

My belief if this also can be backdated.

What I am unsure of is how common this is, can anybody shed any light on their experiences of it please?

The circumstance here is my partner and her ex. She left him, they own a property 50/50. He hasn't paid her a penny for the pleasure of living there in the very nice house for the last 2.5 years, she has of course had to be paying to live elsewhere.

There are various other bones of contention in play, I would like to have an idea of how realistic some consideration is of this issue when it comes to a final settlement.

They are not / were not married.

Thanks again for the thoughts, advice and experience shared.

Never heard of it but a bit of swift Googling turned this up:

https://www.ellisonssolicitors.com/news/occupational-rent-what-is-it-and-when-should-it-be-considered-when-separating/

Assuming there is a reasonable amount of equity in the place your friend should be getting legal advice on how to realise her share. Are there children from the relationship.

I guess she's not having to claim Universal Credit or the DWP would be leaning on her.

Thank you - yes, legal advice is very much in progress, but this is one of those areas which has a large bit of 'it depends' involved, so I thought some first hand experience may be helpful in deciding whether it's even worth bothering.

Removing any exact numbers but for the sake of an example here.

House £500k.

Equity £450k.

50/50 owners.

1 child involved at this point. No official arrangement for this child written down and things very adhoc.

No UC or anything like that, she is in full time employment.

Legal fees as you can imagine mounting up and not likely to stop based on failed mediation attempts - a lack of ability to be reasonable making any form of negotiation nearly impossible has made this a very long process with very little progress to date.

So just trying to see what might be worth hanging onto / pushing ahead with, and what is worth just not even attempting in an effort to move on and get things resolved.

Limbo status is sub-optimal for all.

Who is currently paying the mortgage? Usually, if the person who is occupying takes over the full payment, this is considered occupational rent. Beyond that, there are no hard and fast rules around it and it’s difficult to obtain if the non-occupier has voluntarily moved out.

If they weren’t married and there are no extenuating circumstances, forcing the sale of the house might take some time, but shouldn’t be resulting in mediation and endless bills. Unlike divorce, it’s a fairly straightforward legal process.

Wise words, thank you.

The only circumstances involved are weaponised teenagers sadly, so nothing is ever simple.

Like you say in principle it is all very straight forward and easy to do. Just agreeing on a value thus far has taken over 2 years to still not agree, even after a RICS survey.

You can likely infer from that how easy each other step is also!