Question for resident property experts!

[samwilliams]

As this place seems to pretty much manage to be the fountain of all knowledge, I thought it was as good a place as any to ask a couple of questions.

Me and my brother are looking at the possibility of buying a house in London. Basically I'm a veterinary student, and he's doing other stuff at the moment. It seems as though if we buy a 3 bedroom place (seem to be available around sub £300,000 mark in Camden) and rent out the extra room, an interest only mortgage would be about the same if not cheaper than rent. Our parents don't have a mortgage on their house any more (it's worth about £500,000 we think), and are willing to be guarantors.

Will anyone give us a mortgage for pretty much all of the value of the house? Would it be better to convince my parents to remortgage their house?

The other point is about tax stuff if my parents officially own it. Is there any way of getting around that, bearing in mind that it's not really them paying for it, it just might have to be in their name to be able to get hold of the mortgage?

At the moment we're just trying to work out if it's a stupid idea or not, which it probably will be. If any of you could give any suggestions, or tell my it's stupid and not worth pursuing, that'd be fantastic.

Thanks very much

Sam

[samwilliams]

eric mc said:

If your parents are actually taking out the loan for the property, they are not just being guarantors. They are the actual borrowers. Who is going to be making the loan repayments, your parents?

Well, ideally the loan would be in mine or my brother's name (or both). We would be making the loan repayments (which would work out at slightly less than rent for someone else). It's just whether we could get someone to loan us enough.