Buying out family

done4now

My grandparents bought a in the same estate as where my parents had a home. This used to be rented out but hasn't been for over 10 years now and has fallen into serious disrepair.

After my grandparents passed away the house was left to my father and my aunt each having 50% share but recently my aunt died suddenly and now her 50% has been split up with 25% going to my other aunt and 5% going to each of my deceased aunts kids (who are all in their 30s and 40s).

The house is in a good enough area in a big town, so its hard to know how much its worth. Funnily enough my deceased aunts family have been trying to sell another house in the same estate for €135,000 but haven't been able to secure any bidders. I have looked at propertypriceregister.ie and a house sold in the same estate for €105,000 last month the next one after that was nearly two years ago at a price of €140,000.

I have recently returned from the UK and I had been saving while I was there (I have roughly €30,000 when converted) but due to the nature of my job I cannot invest my money into shares and the fact I have only turned 26 I wont be looking to buy a house of my own for a good number of years.

My father has floated the idea with me to buy out the others jointly which I think is a good idea as it cuts down the number of owners and I can finally do up the house (something I have been wanting to do for some time now).

But before I go any further how should I approach the price of the house never mind getting 6 people agreeing to it?

Santa Cruz

First do a bit of background enquiries to establish roughly what you would be willing to pay, check price register etc. Then establish whether or not the others are willing to see and mention the price you were thinking of. Try and get a bit of discount since in a way you are organising everything for them, saving the auctioneers fees etc.
There will ALWAYS be one bollix who thinks the house is worth a lot more than it actually is.
Bear in mind that if there are joint owners the costs of maintenance, insurance, property tax etc. should be equally borne by all

Ray Palmer

Firstly I think it is a good idea.

After that the practicalities of this are not that hard. You contact them all ask how they would feel about selling.

Price can be worked out by getting 3 valuations by estate agents and/or putting it on the market. This is a reason houses sometimes appear on the market and then sell for less than offers.

Once you have a market price you factor in the cost of putting it up and selling it through an agent. Take this off the price and agree that price. Sometimes people in families might allow a price even less than that but that depends on the people involved. Given it is over a number of people and drop in price effects people a lot less it is often not a problem.

How close are your family and how people are with money really determines how this can go.

I wouldn't put any pressure on individuals but let the group put their own pressures on anybody objecting. Why anybody would hold on to 5% of a standard house would be a surprise to me.