So I'm getting married next year to my fiancée.
I own my own two-bed apartment which has an SVR mortgage of €227k and is worth approx €400k. I have a salary of approx €65k. My fiancée has moved in with me in recent times and the plan would be for us to spend the first few years of married life in my place. I'm relatively financially aware and I feel lucky to have built up some decent equity in my own property.
However my fiancée also owns an investment property which she has never lived in. Her parents developed two mews houses during the Celtic Tiger period (long before I knew her) and put one of them (and the mortgage used to build that particular house) in the name of my fiancée at the time around 2007 or so.
Her mortgage is on a tracker rate and is let out to tenants but I believe the rental income is approx €1000 a month below the mortgage repayments and of course there will be income tax returns to make on the income generated as it is an investment property.
Truth be told, I suspect my fiancée simply signed the paperwork when she was in college and based on my discussions with her she has always let her parents effectively act as the landlords of this investment property on her behalf. I sense she has never really been fully aware of the detail around this investment property and doesn't really know what its current market value is. Privately I wonder whether she ever received any independent legal advice on the pros and cons of this arrangement at the time, but that is speaking with the benefit of hindsight and for diplomatic reasons I wouldn't say that out loud in front of my future in-laws.
Of course, now that I am getting married to her, I think we will need to take much more of a hands-on approach to the management of this investment property and I understand her parents are keen for us to take over the management in the near future. Funding the shortfall in rent will effectively become partly my responsibility after we are married and the fact that we both have existing mortgages will be a consideration if we ever decide to trade up and buy a proper family home in the coming years.
We both have decent incomes so servicing the tracker mortgage on the mews house would be viable but I'm wondering if we would simply be better off selling it the moment the market value of the property is sufficient to repay the existing mortgage. Although we would be getting an asset out of it, I'm concerned that we would need the cash-flow up front if we ever have kids etc.
I'm planning on sitting down with my fiancée's parents in the coming weeks to try and get full visibility on this. I'm obviously going to marry her but I think its only fair I go into marriage with all the facts in front of me. Any thoughts or comments on what I should be asking would be appreciated.
I own my own two-bed apartment which has an SVR mortgage of €227k and is worth approx €400k. I have a salary of approx €65k. My fiancée has moved in with me in recent times and the plan would be for us to spend the first few years of married life in my place. I'm relatively financially aware and I feel lucky to have built up some decent equity in my own property.
However my fiancée also owns an investment property which she has never lived in. Her parents developed two mews houses during the Celtic Tiger period (long before I knew her) and put one of them (and the mortgage used to build that particular house) in the name of my fiancée at the time around 2007 or so.
Her mortgage is on a tracker rate and is let out to tenants but I believe the rental income is approx €1000 a month below the mortgage repayments and of course there will be income tax returns to make on the income generated as it is an investment property.
Truth be told, I suspect my fiancée simply signed the paperwork when she was in college and based on my discussions with her she has always let her parents effectively act as the landlords of this investment property on her behalf. I sense she has never really been fully aware of the detail around this investment property and doesn't really know what its current market value is. Privately I wonder whether she ever received any independent legal advice on the pros and cons of this arrangement at the time, but that is speaking with the benefit of hindsight and for diplomatic reasons I wouldn't say that out loud in front of my future in-laws.
Of course, now that I am getting married to her, I think we will need to take much more of a hands-on approach to the management of this investment property and I understand her parents are keen for us to take over the management in the near future. Funding the shortfall in rent will effectively become partly my responsibility after we are married and the fact that we both have existing mortgages will be a consideration if we ever decide to trade up and buy a proper family home in the coming years.
We both have decent incomes so servicing the tracker mortgage on the mews house would be viable but I'm wondering if we would simply be better off selling it the moment the market value of the property is sufficient to repay the existing mortgage. Although we would be getting an asset out of it, I'm concerned that we would need the cash-flow up front if we ever have kids etc.
I'm planning on sitting down with my fiancée's parents in the coming weeks to try and get full visibility on this. I'm obviously going to marry her but I think its only fair I go into marriage with all the facts in front of me. Any thoughts or comments on what I should be asking would be appreciated.