Break ups where a joint mortgage exists

LegacyUser

Hi

I'm not happy in my current realationship with my girlfriend,We have been going out together nearly 5 years and living together nearly 3.
Its a true saying if you wanna know someone move in with them!
Things started off fine but over the last 12 months i have become increasingly unhappy with living with her.If im honest i never really felt it was the right thing to do.I really want out now,
We bought a house together as i said nearly 3 years ago..
My question is if we were to break up and say i decided to buy her out of the house how does it work?
I persume it will be on the current valuation of the house?
So say if the house cost us 300k and is now worth 350k would i have to pay her 25k for her half of the house?
Also what about all the stuff we have bought for the house ie.TV's,sofa's,washing machines etc..
There would have been no record of who bought what at the time as we both got loans to furnish the house..
Any advice from someone who has been through this or someone that knows the legal side of this would be great thanks..

dudara

Whose name is the mortgage in? Did you make equal payments towards the house? Did you agree any legal terms prior to moving in together? A few details like that will help.

Damzilla

Going through something similar myself at the moment. If the mortgage is in both your names then the first thing you will need to do is contact your bank to see if you are in a position to buy her out. They will have to agree to you buying her out and then taking on the mortgage yourself. You may need to re-mortgage to buy her out so your mortgage payments would go up too. Are you financially able to do this?

In terms of the furniture and stuff in the house then if you are buying her out could you give her x amount of money towards everything in the house?

Have you spoken to your girlfriend about this? Is there any chance the spilt will be amicable? If so then it would make life much easier for both of you in the long run. I'm lucky in that the spilt is fairly amicable and we have both agreed on what way we want things to go.

Good luck and I hope everything works out ok for you and for her.

Grawns

This might help

SarahMc

The other posters are correct about contacting bank first to see if you have the capacity to buy her out (banks are much stricter now than 3 years ago). In terms of valuation, you are correct, market valuation (average of 3) minus mortgage outstanding, divided by 2.

Contents are not worth fighting over, they are worth a max of a third of what you purchased them for. Like Damzilla says, keep it amicable, and don't dream of getting solicitors involved.

IRISH RAIL

been there done that finally wrapped up last april after a long time
first is see if you can afford it realisticly I doubt it, then you will have to put the house on the market if you are lucky like me my brother and his oh were looking to buy so the deal was struck.
you will have to sit down with her and go over all the things in the house dont be mean and fight over the tv there cheap enough nowadays you can buy another, it wont go to court unless she refuses to sell and thats a very long drawn out process, also when youre selling the house she will prob want her own soliciter this seriously slows things down as there are three involved yours hers and the buyers, if you can go to someone independant that the two of you can deal with but if the break up is bad then I doubt this will happen, there is a third way,
you can get a soliciter to draw up a contract ( should have done that like me before you bought the house a lesson to everyone out there ) you could rent the house out and the two of you would be "business partners" with the current situation in the housing market this might be the best financial option you could get a short term renter while the house is up for sale.
that doesnt suit everyone but its an option.
I feel for you it was probably the most stressful time in my life living with a psyco while broken up waiting for the deal to go through.

LegacyUser

So if one of the two people now in the OPs situation wants to get away from the mortgage do they have to pay the staying person given that there is a lesser value of the property?

IRISH RAIL

Not sure about the negative equity side of it but what will happen is the housse will be put "on the market".
the op bids and wins the bank gets paid off and proceeds if any get split.
if the house is not worth as much as is owed the op and ex will be responsible for meeting the final payment. then the op signd the new mortgage papers etc and its all his.
sory for the earlier post i have this terrible habbit of not using punctuation in anything. I blame the teachers!!!

3qsmavrod5twfe

Check the terms of the agreement you signed at purchase. In some cases for unmarried couples there is a partnership agreement stating that if for some reason the partnership should fail that you may have to sell the house to recoup whatever value you can on it. If your mortgage was sold as a joint mortgage product and that would be the reason for the partnership agreement.

Before you approach a bank confirm the terms of any agreement such as this that was signed initially as it could impact how you proceed with this if you do indeed decide to proceed down this road. If you speak to the solicitor who orginally did the conveyancy for you they should be able to show you any agreements that were signed as part of the purchase and advise you of your legal obligations in this regards.

Best of luck.

tbh

get the house valued (say 300)
fınd out how much you owe on the house (hopefully it wıll be less than it's worth) (say 250)
You owe your g/f half the dıfference (say 25K), plus you should gıve her a nominal sum to cover contents and movıng expenses - (say 5K).

iguana

Liverpoolfan08 wrote: »

We bought a house together as i said nearly 3 years ago..
My question is if we were to break up and say i decided to buy her out of the house how does it work?
I persume it will be on the current valuation of the house?
So say if the house cost us 300k and is now worth 350k would i have to pay her 25k for her half of the house?

I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news but you bought in 2006 which was the peak of the market and it's generally accepted at this point that prices have fallen 40% since then. This would make the value of your house about €180k in this market. Disregard local asking prices, they mean nothing, it's sales prices that matter. It's possible that you could be lucky and get more if you did sell, but don't count on it. Unless you bought with a very large deposit you will be in negative equity.

You will need to discuss this with your mortgage provider, but there will be no easy way out of this. What they decide will be influenced by a number of factors: What type of mortgage have you? Are you tenants in common, ie you each have a defined share of ownership and liability, or are you joint tenants, ie you both own the house and liability. Is your mortgage repayment or interest only? And how much of a deposit did you pay?

iguana

tbh wrote: »

get the house valued (say 300)
fınd out how much you owe on the house (hopefully it wıll be less than it's worth) (say 250)
You owe your g/f half the dıfference (say 25K), plus you should gıve her a nominal sum to cover contents and movıng expenses - (say 5K).

It's unfortunately not that simple. The mortgage company may refuse to allow the OP to do this as this would mean him taking on the whole mortgage as a single person and if they do not believe he will be able to make the repayments alone they will not take his gf's name off the mortgage.

shellyboo

The original post is from 2008...

iguana

IRISH RAIL wrote: »

you could rent the house out and the two of you would be "business partners" with the current situation in the housing market this might be the best financial option you could get a short term renter while the house is up for sale.

This again isn't an easy option. First off the mortgage would have to be changed to a BTL mortgage which will be more expensive and they will lose their interest relief. Secondly it's a strong possibility that he and his gf will not cover costs this way and will be paying a shortfall every month, while their joint asset continues to fall.

It will also mean that he and his gf are tied together until they can afford to clear the mortgage and the longer they hold onto the house, the harder this becomes. It could be 10 or 20 years before they are clear of this. And while they have this hanging around their neck it will prevent either of them from buying another property.

One thing to remember when you go to the bank is that they will not have your best interests in mind. They will have theirs.

tbh

iguana wrote: »

It's unfortunately not that simple. The mortgage company may refuse to allow the OP to do this as this would mean him taking on the whole mortgage as a single person and if they do not believe he will be able to make the repayments alone they will not take his gf's name off the mortgage.

aye, I was assumıng he was cleared for the mortgage - as ıt turns out, ıt was wrıtten ın 2008 so he may well have been