Buying an adult child a house outright: long-term impact?

[Cozylittlecottage]

Have you done this or know anyone who has bought their adult child a house outright when they left uni or were in their 20s?

What impact did it have on their career/life choices and how are they getting on in life now?

Has it impacted their decision to get married?

I'm not a journalist ☺️ We're actually in the process of making plans to do this and I'm curious how it worked out long term. Did it sap them of career ambition or did it give them more confidence to pursue what they were interested in.

Just interested in the experiences of others who have done this. Thanks 😊

I have a friend whose parents did this when she was really young and she had a house bought for her following their divorce. My friend married young and had children young. No career as such I think she would have made the choices she did without money but it meant they have lived mortgage free on one wage while their children are young.

“Nothing worth having comes easy”

I wouldn’t take away from my children the thrill of working hard towards achieving a goal. Not in their 20s. That’s what life is all about!

I wouldn’t discount it in their 40s eg, once they’ve shown they are proper adults.

I would let them know I would help once they are ready to buy.

I wouldn’t go straight into taking the lead in buying them a house, especially before their careers are established.

I have STEM PhD / research based Dc and nephews and nieces and their degrees and jobs (before 30), have taken them from Southampton to Edinburgh to Cambridge, Bristol to Cambridge to Bath, Oxford to Cambridge… In the current market buying and selling is very expensive. Price rise unlikely to cover the huge costs especially once FTB stamp duty is lost.

I would wait until career and or relationship is established. And then help but not buy outright. And help again if they later needed a bigger family home.

I know sensible well brought up young people can be given houses without being spoilt brats, but I think it is not a good foundation for a relationship if a couple do not buy their home as a team. This can be seen across many many MN threads, where he has the house, translates into power, and she has no security. Which she can only get by marrying, if they live together. Does that affect her decision? Etc. Or maybe the ‘home providing’ partner stays or feels trapped in a relationship because they do not want to see half their assets disappear. It just skews everything.

I'd definitely be a lazy waster if I had been given a house!

I did this because I really didn’t feel I had a choice. My DC is disabled and will never be able to afford to buy a property. We tried private renting in HOMO and they were disasters. So in the end I bought them a home so they have a secure place to live for the rest of their life.
If I had my time again I wouldn’t do it, the financial repercussion is massive and now I don’t think I did make the right decision but I could never ask for it back.

I think the sweet spot might be a big down payment with them paying off the mortgage. That way they get a big boost, but still have responsibilities and will have made a contribution to building their own future.

There was an article recently in either the Times or the Telegraph by a parent saying it was one of the worst things they did. Obviously thought it would be a great start for the child but it impacted their career significantly with them not feeling the need to keep any particular job.

Personally I know at least 7 people who have done this and they have had no such problems with children holding their career focus - a couple of doctors, the other finance type things.

Totally dependant on the child and the attitudes they have been raised with I would say.

I had about 25% of a tiny house in my early 20s (45k) and then we worked hard to buy something big enough for a family. Then had some more inheritance in our 30s which made life much easier. I think we would still have worked hard if we had had a whole house given to us but might have travelled more too. I wouldn't give my kids enough that they don't need to work. I think a decent deposit is great though.

We are just about to help one of our children buy a flat by giving them half the money. They can't afford a mortgage on their salary otherwise. We helped another with a large deposit but they have a partner whose parents contributed an equal amount. We have another child who we would like to help down the line if we can who also can't afford to buy otherwise. It's a brutal world out there.

Really interesting thread. Just because we can save our children some of life’s struggles, should we? Is it best for them as a whole person? I know I really value some of the struggles I had looking back, as they taught me a lot. Like you my parents could never have offered me something like this and so for me to consider this kind of gift to my children, I feel very wary, probably because I have no model of what that looks and feels like, but have a model of ‘no one can help me that much so I have to make my own way’.

It strikes me that it’s impossible not to send a message of ‘we will make your life easier for you so you don’t have to struggle’ with this gesture, and that will have pros and cons. Even if they don’t fully appreciate what they are being given, yet. They will certainly be offered the chance to feel safe and secure in the world that some of us do not. But yet isn’t there an inherent disincentive to make your own way? An associated ‘it doesn’t really matter what I do because they’ll fix it for me?’

Not judging at all, it’s a dilemma I will face as well. I know I feel really uneasy about the savings accounts we have for them that they can access at 18. I think that’s too young and they will inevitably waste it, and not have the chance to begin to learn about supporting themselves. But maybe I’m clouded by my own experiences and maybe it’s a good thing.

I know someone who bought both kids a house each. The DD was a single parent and has remained so. She has a very successful career.
The DS set up his own IT company and married a woman who was super successful in her own right, I guess they moved in thd same circles. So all worked out OK.
There is now talk of setting up the GC as they are approaching that age.

I see @itstoolateforsnacks ‘s point. Being a “snowplough” parent can rob a child not of ambition, necessarily, but responsibility.

As we have all said, it does depend on the child - and the parent. I must admit if I could buy the dcs properties (some hope!) I would be keeping a keen eye on them. In fact I’d probably be round with a clipboard once a week doing a maintenance check…

My neighbour bought her dds a flat in London. Highgate no less! After five minutes one emigrated and the other took a job elsewhere. The dds chose to sell and take the money which neighbour said wasn’t the idea at all.

For those parents that have done this, how have you handled it with regard to future partners?

Do you accept that once you've handed the money over it's nothing to do with you anymore or have you put legal protections in place?

We've had several nasty divorces in our family that have destroyed people's finances, so it's something we need to think about.

I have a girl and a boy, and possibly I have a potentially hypocritical attitude to them individually. With my son, I'd like any future wife and kids to be looked after but for my daughter, who is likely to have her own children, to not have to give away her house in the event of a relationship break down.

I think it’s an appealing concept but there are many threads on here where offspring complain about pressurising parental behaviour when they live in a home paid for by parents. Or feelings of obligation.

We did this for my son when he was 20 (25 now) and helped him purchase an apartment (we put up a third of the cost). He is extremely ambitious and sold it a few years later and now has a four bedroom house in the south east of England. It spurred him on, if anything.

What we did with the large house deposit my parents gave us was - we owned the house in unequal shares. My parents didn't insist on this, it was our idea. When we sold that house to buy our current home, we were 15 years and 2 kids in, so our current home is 50:50. What I wanted was a bit of protection against a very short marriage.

We'd like to buy one child a cheap 2 up 2 down, mainly because he has a disability which workplaces openly discriminate against. He's a good, hard worker and I don't think the purchase of a house would change that, but it would give him security. What stops us is we have other children and we can only do it for this one child.

I don’t think anyone can tell you what will happen - it entirely depends on the drive and personality of the individual. My PiL gave all three children enough money to buy a property each. 2 did and continue to work and 1 did and has done nothing with her life at all. Absent the need to work, she just doesn’t.

But for my DH and his sibling, the financial security has allowed them to pursue careers they might not have felt able to, if their focus had to be building their own financial security. My DH has been able to change careers twice without worrying about the drop in salary such changes bring at the beginning, and is now really happy. His sibling was able to pursue an artistic venture and has built a successful business on the back of it. It was risky and would not have been possible without the fall back of security. But they are simply more ambitious and driven than their sibling.

My DD will likely inherit a lot. So I try to instil in her ambition and a work ethic. I feel utterly privileged that she will be able to choose a career that she loves, even if it is not well paid. I want her to understand it’s a privilege and go for it. I would be very disappointed if she did nothing at all so we have tied things up so she can’t get much until she is 25. Though in fact we might use some of it to buy her a property after uni, as long as she seems sensible, driven and focused on making something of her career.

My son has 2 friends in this position. One was bought a 5 bed house a couple of years after graduating. He comes from an academic family and trained as a teacher. It doesn't appear to have affected his ambition at all, he's a deputy head in his early thirties and is engaged.

The other one is a GP married to a GP who met at university so clearly no lack of ambition or hard work. She was bought a house while at university which she sold after graduating and they then moved to a 5 bed house. They now both work part-time and don't have to use any child care for their young children.

Both these couples have a great life, no money worries whatsoever, lots of holidays, expensive cars, eat at the best restaurants etc.

I can’t answer this question but I think it is right to consider their positions differently. Women still face unequal pay, loss of career opportunities after they have children etc. I would be far more careful of a daughter’s financial position in the face of divorce than a son’s. It’s not hypocrisy, it’s practicality based on reality.

One alternative thing I've seen done is buy your child a flat in their name to rent out, but their main family home is their responsibility. This gives them an income and an asset that is transferred early enough to hopefully not count for IT/deprivation of assets, but it lets the child still have full autonomy over buying/selling/moving their own home and it means there isn't a power imbalance in their relationship where one spouse is living in a house 100% owned by the other.
I think this way is better - not least because I've also seen people living in houses owned or gifted by parents who find the parents believe that they get an ongoing say in decorating it/come and moan at them for not planting the garden to their taste/etc, and nobody wants that.

I am the indirect recipient of a similar arrangement (my in-laws bought my husband a small house when he graduated, several years before I met him). We're no longer in the same house but in a slightly bigger one in a slightly cheaper area (ie we didn't spend much extra to move)

Did it make him more attractive to me? Probably yes, and it allowed our relationship space to develop compared to if we'd both been living at home.

Did it make him unambitious in his career path? I think it made him unrealistic in how much life costs - he coasted through his 20s and he only buckled down to a serious job trajectory at 30 ish when he met me and we started a family. I think it's made both of us unambitious about striving for a bigger and better house - this house is not huge or posh but it's fine and it's free so we'll stick with it.

Has it helped us in life? It's definitely allowed us the financial breathing room to pursue a life we wanted without having to worry about a roof over our head. Not having to pay out £1-2k a month in rent or mortgage is a lot of extra income each month. I was able to be a SAHM for a while and then work only part time when my kids still needed me. And the certainty of knowing that we will never be forced into moving unless we want to; that has been lovely.

Are we grateful to his parents? Yes, it has been a life enhancing gift to us and our kids - although I know he would say not without an element of parental control ie "we want you to settle down and have a family somewhere near to us". They would have been very unhappy with us if we had rented it out and gone off to travel the world, for example.

This sort of happened to me.
My mum died after a 6 week illness when I was in my early 20s. I was living at home at the time. My mum had a lot of pets which were divided between me and my siblings so renting would have been a struggle.

My dad bought a small house outright for me to live in. It wasn’t in my name but I could live there for as long as I liked, potentially forever.

I still wanted a proper career. I worked in the police for many years and now have a good job still in the Criminal Justice world. I don’t live there anymore; when it was sold, I was given 1/3 of the sale price. It has been life changing for me.

I live in a beautiful house with land (I have horses). It wasn’t a huge boost and without it, I could never ever be in this position. However, both myself and my partner still work hard. We’re public sector so won’t ever be super high earners but we work hard and made sacrifices to have the house we live in now. It would have been impossible for me to do this if my parents hadn’t helped me the way they could, and I’m extremely grateful.

I am in a fortunate position that my parents were able to do this, albeit obviously I wish my mum hadn’t died so it’s a very double edged sword. However, it’s changed my life in a far more useful way than receiving a large inheritance later in life when my dad passes away.

This is a really interesting thread. I'm afraid I have seen a few friends bought houses/inheriting large sums early on and they have really lost their motivation, although I'm sure it depends on the individual.

The thing I'd consider is: earning your own money, having to earn that money, buying a house (or whatever) with that money, growing it, getting payrises, getting satisfaction from your career and all of its challenges, all of this is such an important and rewarding part of life. Could the joy of this be removed if you don't have to work? Honestly, I think it might.

I was on the receiving end of this... I'm now early 40's I have moved once for a bigger property and I'm mortgage free again.

I'm not ambitious in terms of work and have the luxury of fitting work in around my children which i otherwise wouldn't have. I do have my own business and earn enough, I enjoy what i do. But more importantly I get to take my kids to school, watch them play their chosen sport and be present as much as I can.

I did buy my first property with my ex. I had declaration of trust that protected my property. I would not choose to get married and this is in party why.