UK Landlord Forum / Life

PLEASE HELP.
I am a very foolish aunty (in law) my partners niece hit hard times, she is a young girl and has a baby. she needed to somewhere to live and I have a property that I rent out at £700 per month. It was vacant and I said if I could help her I would. She advised me that she could only het £510 housing allowance and I agreed that she could have it at that ( my mortgage is £450) I am/was trying to sell which she was aware of but we agreed it would be a start. 2 months ago she said she didn't want to stay there anymore and had applied to the council for a property.

She asked me to issue her a letter advising that she would have to leave at the end of the contract - so I did.
Since then I have re advertised the property at the original rent and have had many people interested.
Sadly our relationship has suffered as she keeps paying her rent late  (even so I gave her a further reduction so she is paying £480 as she said she was struggling)- I am a single parent with 2 children, I cant sell this house (mine and my ex husbands house)  and so have no choice but to rent it to cover the mortgage its a noose around my neck.

We had a bad leak a couple of months ago and the rainwater came into the kitchen. The repairs are £900. I do not have any money to  get this work done. I am bankrupt due to redundancy and divorce.
Please advise - I just don't know what to do.

Firstly well done for trying to help someone in a bad situation, yours doesn't sound too rosey itself.  It's unfortunate that she's decided not to help you helping her.  Paying rent late when it's given to her without fail each month is not on.

When you say you are bankrupt I'm thinking that your skint rather than been officially made bankrupt?

What type of mortgage is on the house you rent out I.e residential, btl etc?

My advice.

Get a 0% credit card if you can, do the repairs, kick her out, let it at commercial rent, use profit to pay off card.

See I can speak Martin Lewis.

I do appreciate it is not that easy.

I would also in your position do all I can to convince Ex Hubby to sell the property and draw a line under matters.

I have a friend who has only just sold her house, and is having to pay her abusive ex hubby from 16 years ago a massive lump of money even though he has done nothing but be absolutely disgusting to her and her children all the time they  were growing up.

It's for reasons like this that I think the old business phrase, "your first loss is your best loss" applies in many situations.

Good luck though, I hope you can sort it out.