Are you thinking of helping a family member buy their first home or have you already helped them? Share your experience - £200 voucher to be won.

We will hope to help all of our children when they are that stage.Only one has bought a house so far. We are happy to help if they also make an effort to save too. As we have 5 children our help will be limited as we hope to be even-handed.

I matched the amount saved monthly with my 3 DCs when they where saving their deposits then gifted them all an equal amount when the time came for them to buy.
I still save for my DGCs for the future for them to get a step up on to the housing ladder when they need it in years to come.

I am looking at helping my son buy and did the calculations, the overriding issue is even after you give them a decent deposit, can they afford the repayments, it’s not easy.

I already helped DS to buy. Seeing the help to buy scheme required you to pay £200 per month, I discounted it. Didn't have that kind of money to spare each month. Wish I'd looked into it further. Later I found it was 'up to £200' so it could have helped. Very glad I did it though, he went from a cheap and nasty rental to a fairly decent house which he is happy with.

Every year, I give my 3 children quite a good sum. They need money , more now, than after I’ve gone. And I need less and less…….I know, I know, what if I have to go into a Nursing Hone? I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it ?

We would like to help 2 of our children buy their first home. They are single and wouldn't be able to do so otherwise. (we're all in London) We would rather help them now than later - we are ready to downsize (especially if they were able to move out!) so cash would come from there.
What puts us off is worry over getting it wrong, What happened if they lost their job and couldn't afford repayments on the mortgage. etc

We lent our son the deposit for his first property with his girlfriend, now his wife. This was about 20 years ago, there was a cash back scheme with the mortgage company, and when he received the cash back a few weeks later when the mortgage was agreed, he repaid us.

The property was about £42,500.

How times change!

We took out savings policies for DC when they were born, not much but it grew, we topped it up, when we had a small unexpected legacy so they both had the deposit on their first property.

DS was a post graduate when we encouraged him to get on the housing ladder as prices were rising rapidly, so I bought the house because I could get the morgage, but DS paid the deposit and paid the mortgage and had a third share in the house. When he moved on a few years later, prices were still rising, so I bought him out and he had enough deposit, in a cheaper area, to buy a house entirely on his own account and with a mortgage because he was working.

The other way we helped our AC was because we are serial house improvers and could help them do renovations, both were able to get buy rundown properties, which we renovated with them, so they quickly had growing equity in their homes.

We gave our daughter and her husband the deposit for their first home ten years ago as a wedding present and an interest free loan which we wrote off on their fifth anniversary. My son's circumstances are such that he will not be buying property. My daughter and SIL have a child now so are looking for a larger property. We are having discussions about how we can assist here too. We would never put our own financial security and plans in jeopardy in order to help our children (they would not accept financial help under such circumstances) but my husband and I count it a privilege to be able to help our children.

Yes, we have helped all our children in the past to buy their own homes.They all needed some initial money to boost their own savings for the deposit needed to get on the property ladder.
They all said they would be happy for the money to be in the form of a loan to them, but we felt they already had debt ( at that point still had student debt to pay) so preferred to give the money as a one off gift to them.
They would all have taken at least five years to save without our help.We would like to help our grandchildren do the same when old enough if possible, but impossible to say now if we will actually be able to.

Why do we have to threads about the same thing