practical advice re house sales etc and relationship breakdowns

LegacyUser

Recently I split up with my boyfriend and co-mortagee (the house is just over 2 years old, and for most of that the relationahip has been on and off more times than a boiling kettle - so much so that neither of us are particularly emotionally upset as we've gone through the mill). Talking sensibly like adults for once in the last two years we decidde the time had come to stop flogging dead horses and to let sleepin dogs lie (apologies for use of methaphors!), but whta next? It's failry amicable, so do we really have to go the valuer/solicitor road? stamp duty? He wants to buy me out so how does that happen? What about joint possessions? Practical advice welcomed, when buying the house i got so sickened by the amount of money and little work done by solictors/mortgage cos - andthe lack of care taken- that I would at least like to know what we can expect.

Sleepy

A professional valuation from an estate agent is necessary, then have him buy you out at half that (plus half a reasonable valuation of the furniture you bought together that he's keeping). You'll then need a solicitor to handle the private sale though the mortgage holding bank may be able to handle that for you. I'd say the first step is to talk to them tbh.

Quigs Snr

Just been through this myself following the sudden end of a 7 year relationship 10 weeks after purchasing a house together. Hard to deal with if your head is wrecked like mine was, but your circumstances appear to be a little better (although obviously nothing like this is easy).

Anyway, first step for me was to contact my mortgage people, in this case the bank and tell them what happened. I wanted to hold the house and pay off her end (even though she wanted no money, guilt does funny things to people). I also wanted to cover the solicitors fees as quite frankly after putting everything into the house and it being the week after christmas I had no liquid cash.

The bank treated it as a new application and I was means tested again etc.... The bank had one provisio, they would no longer give me 92% as it was a single application, therefore I could only get 90% of the houses current valuation. Obviously I needed to house to be worth more than I paid for it, and thanks to the work I had done including a garage extension it was. So the bank sent out their valuer and he put a price on it (slightly inflated after I gave him the sob story). 90% of the value was enough to cover everything I needed so the bank gave the ok and sent documents to my solicitor (who also gave a slight discount).

The solicitor fees were about a grand, then there was 720 to change the deeds with the land registry which was terrible as I had only put the originals in 10 weeks earlier. As luck would have it, a few months later the solicitor called to me to say the land registry were only processing my stuff now and that they had two applications from me therefore they wanted to know which one was valid and sent back the second 720 fee. In your case I don't know will this happen as I don't know if that was just because they hadn't processed already or if it was because I was switching from co-ownership to just me.

Anyway, the bank then put me in touch with the insurance people and I had to cancel all my house and life insurance and take it all out again. The solicitor called after that got me to sign a few things, got that waste of space to heave her miserable arse in there and sign a few things also, and that was it.

Apart from the tax relief they technically have me as a second time buyer now so my tax relief is a lot less these days to the point of being insignificant, perhaps 20 Euro a month ! The bank also gave me the forms for this.

Fairly painless if you have a good bank manager and solicitor. It does cost money, but thats unavoidable. In your case the house will have appreciated a good bit so there will be a good bit of equity there and your former partner will have no problems getting the mortgage covered.

Hope I have remembered everything, any specific questions, feel free to ask.

Beruthiel

I would also do exactly what sleepy said above