Would you sell to you mum for 20k less if

[mrsnw]

It ment you could work and have child care on tap? Long story but we tried to sell our three bed mid terrace a couple of years ago. We discovered that the garage en bloc was subsiding due to a tree. The buyer pulled out and we went through the insurance and the garage is now fixed and tree is removed. However, the house still has that subsidence claim attached to it even though the garage is over 500m away from the house and attached to other garages. Mum has offered 20k less than market value as it's all she can afford and is desperate to move from London to be closer to us. She has offered to have my children for me after school so I can go back to work. Advice appreciated please xx

It sounds like a good arrangement to me, you will be nice and close to your DM to help with any care she may needs as she gets older.

It sounds like your mother is doing you a favour. She's only "desperate to move" to get closer to [i]you[/i] and help you out! If I was in the situation, I'd sell it to her for as little as I can afford. Or, if it were practical, to sell the place to someone else, combine finances and get a bigger place together. Depends how close you are to your mum.

Ring the estate agents and ask about the likely effect the subsidence will have in the price. Lots if people won't touch it

She won't need a mortgage she'll be a cash buyer. The subsidence is nothing to do with the house, it's an en bloc garage. Maybe we should look at splitting the land registry anyway.

I'm just going to give you my story to make you have a little think about that childcare offer.

My lovely Mum lived very close to sister and provided her with massive amounts of childcare, all agreed, everyone happy. She had been providing this childcare since my nephew was 10 weeks old. He is now 15.

She was a spritely 62, active, and relatively healthy, no issues. She underwent a routine mammogram and was diagnosed with breast cancer. They MRI scanned her and she lit up like a Christmas tree. The cancer was everywhere in her body; brain, legs, bones, chest, lymph nodes etc

They decided to give her chemo even though she was terminal because she had no symptoms of anything. 10 weeks later she was dead. Devastated does not even come close to how we all felt and still feel 4 years on.

My Dad is still alive and has taken over the childcare although clearly at the ages my niece and nephew are it is not really childcare. They are 15 and 11.

My MIL is 63 and is currently undergoing chemo. She again is active, very healthy in terms of exercise and diet. Just had a bad back one day, turns out to be leukaemia. Very aggressive. This wasn't the retirement she had planned. We are 5 months into treatment.

So the whole point of this is, if anything happened to your Mum could you still work and afford the house you want to move to? You need to allow for childcare should you need it.

I am not saying don't sell to your Mum, because quite frankly I would.

Christ, that sounded depressing didn't it? I also meant cherish your Mothers. Take lots of photos of them with yourself and your children.

Sell to your Mum. Cash buyer, and it's your Mum, it's your MUM!

I would definitely sell to my mum for less than market value to get her nearby but I'm not sure that is what is happening here. The valuation you have isn't accurate so she probably is paying market value and no estate agent fees saves you money again. If it were me I wouldn't want to take the max she could afford as at some point she willneed to adapt it to suit her better.
I'm not suggesting you are ripping her off at all but it doesn't sound like a favour tbh. I'd get a couple more valuations with all the facts or with and without the garage.

Having read the other replies, I think perhaps it's a bad idea. Surely it's better you move first, get settled in, then your mum can move to be near you to a home that's better suited to her needs, and doesn't have a history of subsidence? If she wants it to be her "final" home, a bungalow might be more sensible, for example. My mum's house has a history of subsidence (she didn't buy it from me!), which she was able to buy easily as she was a cash buyer, and insurance has been a real pain. Selling will be difficult too. (In this case, though, splitting off the garage may solve that.)

The only benefit of her buying your house, is that you can move more easily. The financial benefit to her could be achieved just as easily by giving her some money to help her buy a new home, and then you could do as the accountant sensibly suggested.

I'm not sure this is ultimately going to be in your Mum's best interests. It will cost her to move again if she needs a house in the future with a bedroom on the ground floor. Plus you need 3 valuations from Agents knowing about the subsidence to be able to judge better what you are realistically likely to achieve.

Also if she's living some way away she won't know how she'll feel doing regular child are until she's here and doing it. You'd definitely need a back up plan if that didn't work out and for her to be able to say she thinks it isn't . It could work really well on the plus side, it's just a bit unknown for now.

Surely many houses sell under the value? Our last one did.