Girlfriend buying out brother

H

Hogannus

Guest
This may have been covered a thousand times before but i can't find anything that matches our situation which i thought would have been quite common.

Basically, i bought a house with my brother a year ago and now my girlfriend wants to buy him out.

We want to know the most straight-forward way of achieving this. I have got different advice from solicitors and banks but hopefully someone out there can give us some step-by-step sound advice.

Thanks
 
Agree the price of buying out the property from your brother. Agree with your girlfriend what her percentage of the property will be and/or agree a figure for her to match your input into the property.

Contact your lender to have your brother removed and your girlfriend added on to the mortgage. Usually the easiest way of doing this is to clear the existing mortgage and take a new mortgage out in you and your girlfriends names via your solicitor. At the same time have your solicitor transfer the title into the joint names of you and your girlfriend.

Have an agreement drawn up by your solicitor as to what happens to the property if you split up or either of you want to buy each other out in the future.
 
Thanks PM1234,
We know about agreeing a price and are happy there should be no problem there.
The big thing is that we don't want to incur unnecessary costs throughout the process. As far as i am aware remortgaging the property can be quite costly. Our solicitor tells us that renaming the deeds is no problem(a small fee but no problem), so all we want is to change the mortgage repayments so that she is paying half instead of him.

One other thing is that the house is in my name only, with a deed of trust recognising the fact that my brother would inherit the house should i die bascially.

I was told by the solicitor that perhaps Equity Release could be an option but i'm not sure if this really applies to our situation.

If anyone knows someone who has actually done this it would be great to hear what steps you took so that all parties are not left out of pocket
 
Its not really that simple.............its certainly not as simple as in your first post.

You're in quite a complicated situation. You own the house on the face of it. Your brother has some interest but he is not on the Deeds - but is he on the mortgage? Why was he not on the deeds? Was this a stamp duty avoidance situation?

Why not just do a straightforward transfer of one half from you to your girlfriend? If the lender is the same, they can join in the Transfer Deed, release the brother and join the girlfriend. Depending on the money involved, there may or may not be stamp duty and gift tax implications.

mf
 
The reason he was not on the deeds is that we had planned that he would eventually move on and buy another property, so we were told that he can still be considered a first-time buyer if he was not on the deeds.

You said "Why not just do a straightforward transfer of one half from you to your girlfriend?". Sorry for asking to be spoonfed here but can you explain to me how this works? It sounds like what i'm looking for.

By the way, the lender is the same, and don't you mean transfer one half from my brother to my girlfriend?

Thanks
 
You need to look at this in very simple terms.

You and your brother did something quite complex ( which I don't think you truly understand) and now its a question of moving on. To all intents and purposes your brother owns nothing. He is not on the deeds. You are the only one on the deeds. You own the property. BUT if you want to cut him out, he has some comeback because he has a Deed of Trust. Mind you, a Court ( if it ever came to it) may very well say that that was a stamp duty evasion trick and refuse to deal with it.

So why don' t you just sell half of what is yours on the face of it to your girlfriend and gift what is paid to your brother?

Example. Property worth 400K. Mortgage is 350K. Equity is 50K. Half is 25K. You sell half share 25K to g/f for 25K, she takes responsibility for half the mortgage, you give 25K to brother, brother tears up Deed of Trust........etc.,etc

mf
 
All of that is fine,
Your figures are close to what we are talking about here.
She even has the 20+k in savings(very soon).

The thing i need more help with is her taking responsibility for half the mortgage.
Obvioulsy her credit would have to be assessed by the bank but from talking to my solicitor we would either have to remortgage or go down the equity release route. I am asking if there are more options with less paperwork
 
"I am asking if there are more options with less paperwork"

No is the answer- in general terms, its a significant step - its not just changing names without any level of responsibility. She will take over ownership of half the property and have joint and several responsibility with you for all of the mortgage. Your brother will be released from his obligations.

Any more messing around with Declarations of Trust and Equity Release is just making the whole thing a huge time bomb.

It really isn't rocket science.

mf
 
Thanks for such an aggressive reply.
I thought this site was to help people by exchanging knowledge, not patronise them.

According to you remortgaging seems to be the only option.
I am simply looking for as much information as possible on transferring one person to another on a mortgage. I am not looking to do any "messing around" with Equity Release. I only mentioned it because my solicitor had suggested it.

If anyone out there has some helpful comments i would appreciate them.
 
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