Buying a house with girlfriend ?

I've just bought a house with my girlfriend, we both paid half the deposit and pay half the bills. Don't move in with her if you don't currently live with her, just rent some where for a while and keep your deposit, if it all goes well then buy with her in a year or so.
 
My girlfriend is rubbish with money, we've been together 5 years and still don't have a joint account.

She earns about half what I earn and we're still renting at the moment, so we split the rent 60/40 (Me/Her) and then I pay for council tax, utilities etc.

I sort out all the financial stuff and she just pays in to my account as and when required.

e.g Food Shopping - We tend to split 50/50 but I pay for it at the till and within a few days she'll send me the money via online banking to cover it.

Anyway, I opened a 1st time buyers ISA on December 1st, but I know she won't be able to save up as she is paying off credit card debt (not much, and interest free balance transferred) but with the rent, food etc it doesn't leave her anything to save.

Doesn't bother me really, I'd rather she's debt free by the time we come to buy a house as the Mortgage companies take existing debt off of what they will lend you anyway.

Not all of us have the luxury of being on equal pay, and why shouldn't the person who earns more contribute more? As long as she isn't throwing money away on crap.
 
I've been with my GF for about 4 years now, recently just bought a house.

We just put all of our wages into a joint account each month and then everything goes from that. I trust her enough that I don't mind doing thing. Although I earn slightly more than she does, I'm happy enough that we both put in everything to call it a 50/50 split.
 
Thing is, surely if you buy the house in your name only then the bank will only account for your wages when calculating how much money they will lend which may affect whether you can afford the house?
 
Thing is, surely if you buy the house in your name only then the bank will only account for your wages when calculating how much money they will lend which may affect whether you can afford the house?

That's true, having nearly bought a house in 2012 you need a joint account for them to be able to take in to account 'joint income'
 
^Not true. As that was not the case when I applied for my mortgage. They considered her income. A mortgage advisor helped in that respect.
 
I had the same issue when I bought a house with my ex, I put down 75% of the house from savings, she put down 4.7% and we got a mortgage for the rest.

When we split up last year she wanted half of a rather expensive house.

If she does not have a deposit, I suggest you buy the house, pay the mortgage your self and charge her rent.
 
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I had the same issue when I bought a house with my ex, I put down 75% of the house from savings, she put down 4.7% and we got a mortgage for the rest.

When we split up last year she wanted half of a rather expensive house.

If she does not have a deposit, I suggest you buy the house, pay the mortgage your self and charge her rent.

what happened?

Did she get her mitts on 50%?
 
Given 42% of marriages end in divorce, it's stupid to not consider that possibility and take appropriate, sensible steps to mitigate any potential future pain (for both parties).

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/vsob1...t-percentage-of-marriages-end-in-divorce.html

It's not as though a tiny minority of marriages end in divorce...

As I inferred, if you divorce, just split it down the middle... cake and eat it comes to mind ;) I just don't see setting up a pre-nup as a very honourable thing to do, nor do I necessarily see it as responsible because you are essentially advocating your accountability and responsibility to your marriage by saying "yeah, could well fail. Actually, it it starts to fall apart then I won't bother trying, I'll just bail out and go back to how it was before".

.... which then brings me back to the question of why get married?

Certainly sad to see those statistics though and also sad to think we might be trending towards the sort of sentiment in this thread within society somehow.

Anyhow, back to the thread. Seems like you have an issue with this OP and you shouldn't look to buy somewhere, go rent for a while.
 
I've just bought a house with my girlfriend, we both paid half the deposit and pay half the bills. Don't move in with her if you don't currently live with her, just rent some where for a while and keep your deposit, if it all goes well then buy with her in a year or so.


But by renting you won't be able to save as much towards a deposit. Thats my view and why i am waiting another few months to boost my savings.
 
Thing is, surely if you buy the house in your name only then the bank will only account for your wages when calculating how much money they will lend which may affect whether you can afford the house?

That could be a blessing in disguise however. Last thing you want is to commit to a mortgage of e.g. £1k/month affordable between you, and then she doesn't pay her share/you split up, and you're left footing a bill you can't really afford.

But by renting you won't be able to save as much towards a deposit. Thats my view and why i am waiting another few months to boost my savings.

And then you move in together, and realise it doesn't work?
 
That could be a blessing in disguise however. Last thing you want is to commit to a mortgage of e.g. £1k/month affordable between you, and then she doesn't pay her share/you split up, and you're left footing a bill you can't really afford.



And then you move in together, and realise it doesn't work?

Depends how long you have been together, we stay at either of our parents houses a few nights at week at
at the moment so I have a reasonable idea of what it will be like.
 
She did say yesterday that she would pay the full mortgage and utilities every month and just use my wage to live on.

If she pays the full mortgage doesn't that mean the house is hers and not yours? Sounds a bit of a shady place to be in, especially when its your deposit on the line.
 
Deed of Trust/Declaration if Trust is designed to handle exactly this.

You define who provided the deposit, how the ownership of the house is split and how responcibility of the mortgage debt/payments are split.

The purchase fell through, but recently we just drew one up. My GF provided all the deposit which was stated financially and as 7%. Ownership of the house was therefore 53.5%/46.5%, but the responcibility for mortgage payments was defined as 50%/50%.

You can basically slice it however you want, and its a petty common thing that your conveyancor will send you details on.

This is what I did with my gf; it was called a Declaration of Trust.

You need to talk to a solicitor about it, not random people on an internet forum.
 
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