These insider tips will help your adult children buy a property
The facts are many of us will need to help their kids get into the property market. Without that help, the maths doesn’t work and many of our adult children just may not be able to ever own a property.
Family pledge and limited guarantees
Another way of using the equity in your home to help the kids is by providing a limited guarantee or what is being called a family pledge. Your child may need say $60,000 to get them over the line especially if that amount was required to avoid the cost of mortgage insurance.
Well, a family pledge, secured via mortgage (including a second mortgage) against the home which has ample equity in it, might just do the job.
It may only need to be temporary because if the value of the properties rise, then you can have them revalued and have the pledge released, provided the new loan to value ratios are adequate.
Joint borrower
You could choose to jointly buy a property with them. It could be 50/50 or 60/40 or whatever percentage works for your situation. You are on title and you are jointly responsible for the loan.
For them, owning 50% of something is better than owning 100% of nothing.
You obviously are taking on the risk of the loan if your child fails to keep their end of the bargain, but there are varying degrees of risk within all these ideas and there is an assumed level of trust and reliability between parents and children for any of these strategies to work.
Parental equity and cross collateralisation
Cross Collateralisation is a mouthful, but it simply means using the equity in your home to support a loan that your kids could use to buy a property. It is not a gift or a loan, but really a guarantee or a promise that if your child doesn’t pay back the loan, you will take ultimate responsibility. You are ‘giving’ them your financial firepower or credit.
Imagine that you have a $1m unencumbered home and your son, who has no deposit but a good income wants to buy his first home for $600,000. If the two assets are ‘crossed’, your son would be able to get the loan.
Helping them get government help
Unfortunately, Government support has been skewed towards new properties only, but it’s still better than nothing for some. The First Home Owner Grant, which has just been reduced to $10,000 in NSW (it was $15,000 last year) is available if your first property is a new one. You could choose to help the kids buy a new property to access the grant.
There is also the First Home – New Home Scheme (again biased towards new property only) where the stamp duty is waived or reduced for properties up to $650,000 (in NSW). This can be quite significant as the stamp duty on a $550,000 property in NSW is about $20,000.
Cash-flow contribution
Instead of a capital contribution, you could choose to help with cash-flow and assist with the mortgage repayments (or part thereof) until their income reaches a point where they can comfortably pay the mortgage.
So, how did the bank lend them the money if they are struggling to pay it back? Well, it happens more than you think. People over-extend themselves all the time and are able to find a bank that lends them more than they really should be borrowing.
Helping them to compromise
Too many people are struggling to make concessions to get into the market. If you have grown up in your parents’ home, near the city, near amenities, near the beaches etc. you might be finding it hard to make the necessary concessions to moving out and being an hour away from work. But that is the journey many will need to take if they want to get into the market. If a $1m property is simply not within your reach (with or without parents’ support) then you have to go looking at suburbs or property types that fit your (and your parents’) budget.
Parents may need to make their support conditional on some compromise.
The journey may begin in an area that is less than ideal, but you can then work your way up the ladder over time and get closer to the city or work and lifestyle.
Renting and investing
For a variety of reasons, your children may not want to buy a property to live in. Maybe they want to live close to you so you can stay in touch with the grandkids (and do the babysitting!) or they want the flexibility of being able move around with work or as their needs change.
Financially, renting and not investing is a problem in an environment where asset prices keep rising. But renting and investing is a perfectly legitimate wealth creation strategy for many and compares favourably with more traditional home ownership. Helping them buy an investment property can be just as profound a step in the long run to their financial well-being.
There is a variety of ways of doing this. What it really comes down to beyond capacity, is intent. Where there is a will, there is a way.
Making any or a combination of these ideas work for you, requires customisation to your individual circumstances. There will be tax, legal and liability considerations for many of them and you would be well advised to first canvass the viability of an idea with a financial adviser. They are best suited to navigate you through the varied and interconnected areas of expertise that are required to solve this type of problem.
Written by Frank Paul. Republished with permission of Wyza.com.au.