A FAMILY who’d given up on the dream of home ownership bought a £125,000 four-bed cottage – but spent £24,000 doing up the “falling down” property.
Ruby Deevoy, 30, and her partner Tom, 40, were loaned £45,000 from his mum to help them buy his grandmother’s cottage in Scotland after she died last year.
The property had been left by Tom’s grandmother to his mother and her two siblings when she sadly passed away.
To keep the home in the family, the siblings sold the house to Tom and Ruby with Tom’s mum also lending the couple her share of the property sale in cash so they could afford the deposit.
The couple, who’ve been together for a decade, had managed to save £5,000 in a Help to Buy Isa but any spare cash stopped when their son Faelan, now two, was born.
So they used their savings and £21,000 from Tom’s mum to stump up around a 20 per cent deposit and took out a mortgage for the remaining £99,000.
They’re now using the remaining £24,000 from Tom’s mum to fix up the seriously run-down, almost unlivable cottage.
Not everyone will be so lucky to come into this cash, but health and beauty writer Ruby and photographer Tom say they wouldn’t have been able to buy a place without the help.
And the couple have a legal agreement in place that means they have to eventually repay the cash, which they’re hoping to do in five years time when they remortgage.
Are you a first-time buyer who want to share tips on how you did it? Email us at money@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 78 24516. Don’t forget to join the Sun Money’s first-time buyer Facebook group for the latest tips on buying your first home.
Despite getting the keys in March this year, they’ve still not officially moved in although they hope the work will be finished by August.
We caught up with Ruby for the My First Home series.
We bought our house in Inverkeithing just outside Edinburgh in March this year.
The house belonged to Tom’s grandmother so it’s been in the family for almost 50 years.
It was a bit of a state when we bought it so we’re currently having loads of work done to it and hope to move in properly by August.
It’s a Victorian cottage with four double bedrooms. The house was originally built for the foreman of the Forth Rail Bridge so it has a nice history.
There’s a big back garden – currently overgrown – and a small front garden.
There’s no driveway but the house is elevated off the road and the station is a minute’s walk away.
It has amazing potential but is a bit of a wreck right now.
We paid £125,000 for our house with a £26,000 deposit, most of which was given to us by Tom’s mum.
There was no way we would ever have been able to buy somewhere if we didn’t have that option.
We were saving into a Help to Buy Isa but it just felt like it was never going to happen.
We are both self-employed and our earnings are very up and down.
In total we have been given a £45,000 from Tom’s mum via the house sale. We put £21,000 of that, plus £5,000 we had in a Help to Buy Isa, towards the deposit.
We are spending the remaining £24,000 on house renovations, but that has to include a £10,000 to £12,000 lime render to stop it from getting damp, which doesn’t leave much for everything else.
The house was left to Tom’s mother and her siblings so it never actually went on the market, so we didn’t have to pay any estate agent fees.
There was no stamp duty either because it’s below the Government’s £300,000 threshold for first-time buyers.
Our moving costs have been minimised too because when we left our rented flat in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire to move in with Tom’s mum we downsized and didn’t bring much furniture with us.
We took out a 30-year mortgage for £99,000 and locked into a two-year fixed-rate deal. Our monthly payments are £408.
We weren’t saving any money to be honest, especially after Faelan was born.
The problem was we were paying for all kinds of treatments for his reflux, which is a condition that meant he struggled to keep any food down.
We were struggling to make ends meet rather than saving, so owning our own home never really felt possible.
I am a writer and worked during the night while watching Faelan as he couldn’t ever lie down. We were solely living off my earnings.
We made £1,000 selling old bits and pieces on eBay, for example, I had an old Vivienne Westwood corset that my mum bought in a charity shop years ago for £20.
I meant to put it on a buy-it-now setting but accidentally put it on for bids – it ended up going for £300.
When we moved to Scotland from Cheltenham to live near Tom’s family he wasn’t able to find work either so he did the childcare and household chores.
He also spent a lot of time with his grandmother when she became ill as he was incredibly close to her.
Tom really made this particular house his mission. It was always a constant in his life and he couldn’t bear to let it go.
No one in the family liked the idea of selling the house to a stranger either – it had been in their lives for as long as they could remember.
Tom planned and got the best deals for everything when it came to fixing it up because we had already borrowed cash for the deposit.
The original quote for the lime render for example was double the amount we are ending up paying.
We are planning to remortgage in five years to pay her back.
We hope that the house will increase in value as soon as the work is done and with all the renovation we will do.
The town has also won multiple grants to do up the area so I imagine that will increase the house’s value too.
GETTING on the property ladder can feel like a daunting task but there are schemes out there to help first-time buyers have their own home.
Help to Buy Isa – It’s a tax-free savings account where for every £200 you save, the Government will add an extra £50. But there’s a maximum limit of £3,000 which is paid to your solicitor when you move.
Help to Buy equity loan – The Government will lend you up to 20 per cent of the home’s value – or 40 per cent in London – after you’ve put down a five per cent deposit. The loan is on top of a normal mortgage but it can only be used to buy a new build property.
Lifetime Isa – This is another Government scheme that gives anyone aged 18 to 39 the chance to save tax-free and get a bonus of up to £32,000 towards their first home. You can save up to £4,000 a year and the Government will add 25 per cent on top.
Shared ownership – Co-owning with a housing association means you can buy a part of the property and pay rent on the remaining amount. You can buy anything from 25 to 75 per cent of the property but you’re restricted to specific ones.
“First dibs” in London – London Mayor Sadiq Khan is working on a scheme that will restrict sales of all new-build homes in the capital up to £350,000 to UK buyers for three months before any overseas marketing can take place.
Starter Home Initiative – A Government scheme that will see 200,000 new-build homes in England sold to first-time buyers with a 20 per cent discount by 2020. To receive updates on the progress of these homes you can register your interest on the Starter Homes website.
We may rent the house out during the month-long Fringe festival to raise some extra cash.
We are 20 minutes drive from Edinburgh and because the Fringe is such a huge international festival I would be surprised if we didn’t manage to rent it out.
That would pay our mortgage for a good part of the year or alternatively we could use it to pay back my partner’s mother.
Oh, yes. Two structural engineers were concerned about two big cracks in the house after some plaster was pulled off.
They need to be structurally repaired to make the house sound. This was supposed to be covered by the insurance but they wriggled out of it!
We were up and down for a while not knowing if we would get the house. One minute it was “this house is a write-off” – the next it was “this house is sound”.
It made me ask myself do we want to be buying a house that is falling down around our ears?
Normally if you are buying a house which is not in the family you don’t have that extra insight and can end up buying a house and finding out things later.
We got to find out before we bought it – at which point we said we are not prepared to buy it until this work is done otherwise it is not insurable.
We were able to negotiate £16,500-worth of work to be paid-for at point of sale by the sellers, which in this case was Tom’s mum and siblings, to ensure the cottage was structurally sound.
That includes fixing the cracks, new drains and a new back porch. That really saved us.
It seemed terrible at the time but if we had bought it we wouldn’t have been able to afford an extra £16,500 to fix these things.
Then I thought I had found asbestos in the kitchen but luckily, I turned out to be wrong.
Tom did find some asbestos around piping under the house though. It is a small amount and will cost £200 to remove.
We were told we could leave it or deal with it ourselves by putting wrapping around it.
Although we are on a tight budget we decided to remove it – it is a health hazard but also if we ever decided to sell the house disclosing there is asbestos never sounds good.
It is pretty dilapidated right now and the garden is seriously overgrown.
We have £24,000 from the loan to fix the property up but that has to include a £10,000 to £12,000 lime render so doesn’t leave much for everything else!
Tom is currently clearing, removing carpets and smashing cupboards.
He will strip the original floorboards and put in the underfloor insulation himself to save money.
Bizarrely there is just one length of floorboard that runs through the entire house.
All the floorboards go under the walls and doors and make it impossible to get any of it up, so he has to crawl under the house through a hatch – there are some whopping big spiders.
The £16,500-worth of work will fix the cracks, put in new drains and build us a new back porch. The kitchen is being ripped out too.
The living room has a little setback section which we are going to turn into a diner space.
We want to make it look like a 1920s train carriage because the house was originally built for the foreman of the Forth Rail Bridge.
There is a huge ceiling rose in our bedroom which has a big crack through it which we are hoping we can save.
We ultimately want the house to nod towards its Victorian-era age but have a contemporary twist.
It feels like there is so much potential – we have just discovered a traditional fireplace behind a massive cupboard.
We’re trying to get as much of it as possible secondhand.
We have just bought a lovely vintage cast iron bath for £200 from Gumtree. That was a good find.
We are paying £3,452 for a solid oak kitchen from Solid Wood Kitchen Cabinets – it’s comparable to the cost of an MDF (man-made wood) kitchen. But after reading a lot about MDF chemicals we are keen to go toxic-free.
The family have taken what they wanted but there is still a lot of furniture left. There is a 1920s chest of drawers and desk which will be perfect for the theme we are doing for the house.
We will search Gumtree and eBay to buy a single bed for the guest room and a sofa for the living room.
Surreal! I have been fantasising about buying a house since I was 11-years-old.
To be honest it doesn’t feel like I own it because we are not living there.
I went round there yesterday and the porch is being knocked down and rebuilt – I suddenly thought, wow this is going to look amazing!
We plan to stay at least 10 years and keep the house as long as possible.
We may rent it out so we can travel when our son is older – we like the idea of world schooling when he gets to secondary school age.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online Money team? Email us at money@the-sun.co.uk
