Sharing a house with other families

[Brown and Boris]

We have always joked about selling our house, and the out-laws house and buying some country rectory for us all to live together. If you caught my post about estate agents we recently turned the joke into a possibility when we say something which could have done the job, but in talking about it some very practcal pro's and cons came up. It is all on hold as the house sliped our fingers, mother in law is ill and doesn't want the stress of sucha a complex move.

However, I wondered how many people would consider doing this and what pitfalls you see in this 'communal living'? Anybody lived in the house without having their own space, and how did it work? We lived with the outlaws for 3 months and they lived with us for 2 between houses. It was fine, but the desire to have sex in front of the fire of an evening had to be resisted. Not sure I would do the close living thing permanantly and I think you need some personal space.

We were going to sell two 3/4 bed houses and a 2 bed townhouse and the five of us (us two, the outlaws and their older single son) buy a large house. It goes without saying that we all get on famously and have no loonies or neurotics in the mix. The first issue was whether vendors would wait for three sales or if you had to take a hit on price to break chains to sell at about the same time. We also thought about someone having to rent or move in with the others as each sale progressed and then hope it didn't all collapse and you get left living with them in their house!

Pro's;

one lot of larger council tax, water rates etc but overall we could see savings
on-hand care for the aging outlaws and the cash to make an area of the house disability friendly
we thought that properly set us we might avoid some inheritence tax?
Everyone gets a bigger garden, better location, bigger living space
Shared domestic duties like cooking and shopping, might even be able to afford a cleaner for the shared areas


Cons and issues;

How do you set it up legally in terms of who owns what and the proportions?
what happens in the event of a fall out, a divorce or if the single guy meets some single Mum and wants to move them in (and what if she then wants him out and to keep the house!)
How do you apportion bills? Based on the % of the house owned or simple division of the cost by 5?
When the older outlaws pass on, and Mrs BandB and the bro share the estate, do you have to rewrite the legal deal? What about oif one needs nursing care; would the council take a charge on the whole house to recover their costs?
Finally and less eriously but I can see cdonflict, who decides on the style of decoration; e.g. we are period home, brother in law is stainless steel and black granite, outlaws are chintzy.

Mrs B and B was already suggesting space be approtioned based on contribution, where as I thought that broadly it should be on need, ie. outlaws need 2 ground floor bedrooms, a large lounge to get the wheelchair around and a large disabled bathroom, which may be more space than they have paid for. I think her concern was that bro would want his cinema room (the place we looked at had one) and a spare bedroom for his mates when they had been on the beer, but he hadn't paid for that much space. I was already starting to see conflict!

We thought there would be a need to be able to shut off each part of the house so that each family had a private area, with a shared loungs and kitchen in aditionand each have a small lounge and even a kitchenette in case they didn't want to do the whole 'communal eating' things each evening.

[mas99]

Interesting idea.

TBH though I would think that this is more of a legal question. What happens if... etc comes down to the way you structure the deal, the ownership and supporting contracts. Very similar to the setup questiomns around partnerships/small ltds.

I'd ask this in Business top catch all the legal bods.

[Mattt]

Interesting idea, but a recipe for disaster IMO.