What can I do? Asset but no money

[Throwaway1999]

Background - single mother of 3, don't receive maintenance.

We live with family and I rented out the flat I owned pre-children as our only income which generated around 19,000 a year.

But the last tenants I had did not pay rent and trashed the property and only left after a very long battle. I can't have any new tenants due to the damage.

Due to the property being an asset I am also not eligible for any financial assistance, but the lack of rental income and damages have now depleted all my savings and I won't get help until I can sell it, but I have had no buyers interested in the property due to the damage. The agents I spoke to also said the market is dead in general and it's hard to find buyers, and offers are falling through.

How can I get help until the property is sold? CAB said there is nothing they can do and we're not eligible for anything except church food banks.

You will get a buyer at the right price, no point keeping it.

Can’t you sue the previous tenants for the damage they caused?

My main worry was just that it takes time to sell a property and what will I do in the meantime, having depleted my savings. But I have had good advice on how to move forward

It doesn’t have to take time, you are selling a cheap property that needs extensive work. That is a renovation dream. You say what will you do in the meantime but you have to consider the long term here, you have no money and no income you won’t be able to sink thousands into it so it’s inevitable you will have to sell. Do it sooner and it will benefit you sooner.

I want to do it as soon as possible. I had spoken to estate agents before this who said selling a property takes ages to complete which is why I was worried, when I have nothing to live on. Not that I wanted to hang onto it.

If you put it up for auction the process is quicker. You would need to be prepared to take a hit on value and fees though.

You can get help with childcare on a low wage, my daughter has done it.

Childminders do not charge more than minimum wage. If you got a minimum wage job you'd pay maybe half to the childminder but you'd still keep half. Some childminders will collect DC from nursery and school and keep until parents collect. You need to ring around childminders to see what they offer.

Even if a childminder were minimum wage, I have 3 free hours per weekday. A shift is 8 hours minimum, realistically 10. The rest would require childcare...

You have nothing either way though?

But if you were working, and earning a minimum of £9000 a year (it’s actually less than that, it’s in the £8000s but I can’t remember exact amount) wouldn’t you qualify for 30 hours free?

for context, I pay £7 per day for my child to go to nursery for 10 hours a day, 3 days a week. Any days outside of this are £100 per day but if I stick to those 3 days it costs next to nothing. You current nursery might only offer 3 hours per morning but surely there are day nurseries or childminders near you you could use instead.

Have you had an estimate of the actual market value of the damaged property as it is?

Ordinary estate agents may not be the best people for that; an RICS firm would be a good bet.

Is there a mortgage or other loan secured on it?

A childminder does not charge £12 an hour for each DC. Where do you get this idea from? They make their money from looking after multiple DC so make their wage that way. The point is once your you gest is at school at 5 you drop to a childminder who takes them to school, whilst you go to work. The childminder picks up kids from school and you collect on way home from work. That is what I did from time my youngest was 2 years old. I also had a 10 and 12 year old. All went to childminder. Either I or DH collected on way home from work, whoever got back first.

Why doesn’t your ex pay maintenance?!
you are living on nothing, with 3 children, you should be getting this as minimum!
Sell the flat ASAP, if it’s the right price a cash sale will be likely and will go through quicker. Or get a loan, to fix it up and then re-let, these are your own options realistically. You may find a food bank who will assist without a referral, so do keep looking.

The property market is terrible at the moment and won’t be improving anytime soon. Flats in particular are even harder to sell than usual. I would do your homework about what similar flats in your area have sold for and how long they were on the market before making a decision. As advised by others, an auction sale is your best bet.

I never understand this argument that childcare will cost more than you earn. 2 of your children are in school so that’s around 6 hours a day with no costs. Only one pre schooler and you’ll be entitled to a certain amount of ‘free hours.’ A minimum wage job is over £12 an hour; there’s no way that you ‘can’t afford’ the childcare. Yes, you’d be paying a chunk of your wages on childcare, but you would still make a profit

If you put property in auction you would normally have money within 28 days. This is definitely something for a developer

My childminder charges £5 ph per child and picks up and drops off from school and the attached nursery. Even if you had to pay a couple of hours of childcare per day for 3 children, you would still be earning and better off, surely?
I have 3 children and childcare does cost! But also remember the childcare account or as we have, childcare vouchers, which reduce the cost even more.
And think of your pension too by getting back to work.

How do you think they millions of others manage to work OP? If you are working and paying childcare you will get free hours. Childminders are not charging minimum wage per child. Thats just daft. When do you actually plan to start working? How do you figure you only have 3 hours a day to work. Get a childminder that will do nursery and school drop offs. Do you really think every other single.parent out there only works for the amount of time the children are in the free hours childcare?

Depending on how old the OP's children are she will be in the 'All Work' group in Universal Credit and will be expected to seek/take work but, again dependent on her children's ages, that work needs to be compatible with their care needs.

Such work may be very thin on the ground or even just not there.

She has the option of 'wrap around' childcare but that comes at a cost albeit there may be help from Universal Credit. Childcare, along with affordable transport is one of the costs of taking work.

UC is designed so that people are always better off in work than on benefits but there will still be people where the gain is nugatory; so small it's not actually making a difference.

If OP wants to fully understand her choices a full benefit check using either one of the publically available online tools or through a Welfare Rights Adviser would be the way to go.

Tbh I think some - a minority - of people do have this mindset that any childcare costs are somehow unreasonable and unless they can find work hours which enable them to pay none, or only an extremely small amount, of their earnings on childcare, they claim they ‘can’t afford it!’ As long as you’re making a profit after childcare costs, it is affordable. And with 2 children in school and one entitled to subsidised childcare there’s no way the OP wouldn’t make a profit.

I speak as someone who spent the equivalent of my take home pay on childcare for several years (no free hours when mine were little) though I still continued working for the pension payments and progression. Nowadays, with a certain amount of free hours kicking in really early, it’s nuts for people to claim they can’t afford to work, unless of course they’ve chosen to have huge numbers of kids, or in the very specific cases of a child with such a major disability that care is impossible.

I also agree that if the OP put her flat up for auction, she’d sell it really fast. Seems odd this hasn’t occurred to her if she’s desperate. It’s an odd situation to claim to be in such dire straits yet still maintaining someone needs to give her a job for just 3 hours a day!!

Also £19000 pa for a small 1 bedroom flat? It would have to be in a v desirable area to net that, in which case it had a high value regardless of condition.

Have you made a claim on your letting agent’s professional indemnity insurance? If your tenants behaved this way the referencing was clearly faulty.

Have you made a claim on your landlords’ insurance?

If you’re not working it doesn’t matter where you live. You need to move back in and claim benefits. It’s awful for the children but they will survive if there’s love in the home.

You need to get a job quite apart from anything else!

That is correct house insurance won't cover tenants damage. That is tenant responsibility