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.

My sister in law is a single parent of two boys and has just been given notice to leave from her landlord. We are her only hope of getting on the housing ladder so we are going to help. She is also using the help to buy scheme from the Government. I do have some concerns about the future and what will happen if she can’t afford the payments and also how we will manage with less money? I will also help my daughter buy her first house but luckily that is a few years away yet! We have had some difficult conversations as it involves family and I’m glad of all the sensible and unbiased advice that Santander has provided.

We helped both our children by assisting with a deposit as well as giving back to them the rent they had paid while living at home. They never knew we had saved this for them and were both very grateful.

Both moved in with partners and their partners parents also helped. Without this help they would not have been able to buy and would have had to carry on paying extortionate rents (London).

Both couples also took full advantage of the help to buy savings schemes available.

For both couples their mortgage, bills etc are now less than the rent they were paying.

All the form filling and identifying where we had and how we had the money was a nightmare.

My eldest daughter is in a good financial position but I wish I could help my youngest who currently lives with her husband and child in a house that I own. They pay a peppercorn rent and can't afford more which means they may never get on the property ladder, and means I am also financially strapped but at least have peace of mind knowing they have a decent-ish home to live in. I am fortunate that my husband (not the girls' father) supports me and my decision and I live in his home.

I helped my daughter and son-in-law buy their first home. They had lived in rented accommodation for a few years and were desperately trying to save at the same time, both have student loans to pay back and I could see they really were struggling even though they never complained. So I cashed in my pension early and gave them the rest of the deposit that they needed. They argued initially and kept saying they would only take it as a loan but i said they must take it as a gift….”getting their inheritance early”!

I helped all three. My (now ex) husband’s attitude was that ‘we had to struggle, why shouldn’t they? ‘. Taking no account of the tremendous increase in prices since we bought our first tiny flat. But I inherited a sum of money from my mother, had the inheritance diverted to the children and that along with their savings enabled them each to get a mortgage. They all work as hard as they are able while bringing up my beautiful grandchildren so it was lovely to be able to do it and my husband couldn’t make it difficult for me.

We helped our dd but had to sign a form from her solicitor I think, to say it was given freely as a gift and not a loan, we signed but I wasn’t expecting that because initially it was a loan.

We gave £2000 each towards house deposits (as did the other inlaw parents), to my 2 much older children when they bought their first houses 20 and 16 years ago. By the time the youngest was ready to buy with her partner earlier this year we were far better off and as we’d saved her child benefit from day one by investing in a stocks and shares ISA, she got £22,000. The fund grew massively.

Yes I helped our son and young family to upgrade to a bigger home but within my very limited resources, as I only have my state pension and modest savings! I just wish I'd been able to do more as things are so much tougher for this generation than they were in my day when finances seemed to be much easier.

We helped our three children with the deposit on their first homes and now they all have nice houses so I am glad we did this. Now the grandchildren are growing up and are looking to buy their own places and everything is so expensive nowadays so I think will be doing the same for them helping them to get on the property ladder.

Think I may have commented previously on another thread, but yes when my daughters wedding got cancelled before it was going ahead on the day, so we gave her the money that had been saved up for wedding + she managed to get a half ownership flat which you still need a deposit then its a mortage + rent on other half with housing company association, but sadly we are now not in a position to help out our son, as last year he moved into first house as luckily his partner's parents gave them a deposit - but "with strings attached" - that it has to be paid back each month to them for the next 5 years, but at least they now have a house rather than a rented flat.

I don’t have anything to give them at the moment but hope to downsize in a couple of years and I will give them each some money then. I expect ds2 will have bought by then as he has a deposit saved and would have bought by now if it hadn’t been for Covid. Hopefully it will let the others with a deposit.

This is exactly how we feel. We gave the deposit for the first house; after the couple had rented for few years and made their own decision to settle down together. We have offered money towards their next home, if required. It is our privilege and just means they get their inheritance sooner.

I am planning on giving one daughter £15,000 for a deposit on a house once I sell the French house we have owned for 18 years. The other daughter has her own house and doesn't need any financial assistance at the moment so I will adjust my will accordingly to make sure it balances out in the end. It seems crazy that my daughter and her partner spend more each month on rent than they would on a fairly hefty mortgage so I am happy to help.

My mother helped both me and my brother buy our first homes. I hope to do the same for my children by downsizing / moving to a cheaper area to release capital for this purpose. The move will enable me to be mortgage free and also live closer to my grandson, if things go to plan. Being nearer to family seems more important as I get older and travelling long distances gets harder, so we should all benefit.

My daughter was left with a year old baby boy and no home thanks to a feckless husband. I am lucky to have a very understanding husband who is not the father/grandfather of my daughter/grandson. Between us we had enough cash to buy her a house for them both to live in. She pays no rent but does pay council tax, contents insurance, TV licence etc. She and my son will jointly inherit when we pass on. We are not wealthy but fortunately live in a part of the country where housing is relatively cheap. It is a two bedroom ex local authority property. They are very happy there and we are delighted to have been able to step in.

My daughter loves the house we plan to sell. So we intend to provide her with the deposit to buy it (mortgage repayments aren’t an issue). She gets a home she loves and we get the perfect buyer who is ready whenever we find our perfect retirement home. Everybody wins

We helped our daughter and her partner by giving them some money towards the deposit for their flat. They had already saved quite an amount but we wanted to help them get onto the housing ladder.
When they moved in we took a week out to help them with redecoration too. That was a few years ago and now they are looking to trade up to a small house.

We helped both our children to buy houses, giving them the option of money towards a wedding or a house - and both chose the latter. We were also lucky enough to be in a financial position to help them take a step further up the property ladder a few years later when their families started to grow. We started off our married life with nothing, and have built up our financial reserves through sheer hard work and not wasting money; we feel as if we would rather give money to our children than to the taxman - and while we are alive to see them take advantage of it, rather than after we've gone! One problem linked to this issue (which friends have experienced) is when you help your child to buy a house with a partner, and their relationship ends. That can cause huge problems - so it's best to have a proper legal contract to secure any money you have invested in your child's property and prevent a financially and emotionally unpleasant potential situation later.

Hope to help but time will tell if it will be of any help given house prices, especially if they want to try and buy where we live now.

We helped our two sons with equal deposits for their first properties and their grandparents also contributed to it. One son had saved when he was at home with us and could buy a nicer property with his partner who had saved too and whose parents also contributed the same as us. Our other son did not have any savings and his wife had nothing either, but what we were able to give them got them to get onto the property ladder.

My son has just left home and moved into a rented house but I would really like to help him buy his own house and get his foot on the housing ladder. It’s so difficult because I don’t have a lot of savings myself and I only work part time, but ever since he was a baby I’ve saved his child benefit money in a savings account so I can give that to him now he’s older as a deposit for a house which should hopefully be a real help to him.

Been a parent I need to be fair in how I help my children when they wanted to buy a property. I helped them with part of the deposit for the house and made sure the amount was the same for each of them.

One of the dilemmas is wanting to treat everyone equally, wanting to help all of the children to have homes, and knowing that each have different abilities to return loans.

We have helped all three of ours with their deposits. They have also had to save and work hard to get mortgages of their own too. Can honestly say I’m very proud of them for the work ethic they have. Of course they have been lucky with having our support as we are not wealthy by any means.