When home is a heartache

• Published date: 15 July 2023
• Publication title: Weekend Herald

We are two Supported Living people, one owns the family home now. It is in poor condition, weatherboards rotting, window frames gone, drive cracked and potholed, fences rotted, the list is dire. It is in a cheap suburb. Selling and buying a small unit might work, but checking real estate sales and listings, it seems that it may not sell and pay for a unit, plus costs — even though it is a four-bedroom house with double garage and carport etc. So, how to stay and fix it? A reverse mortgage? Owner is 63. I — his carer and sibling — with no ownership of home, am 60

What do we do? There are no savings, no chance of earning more.

A: It must be depressing watching the deterioration of your home. Time for some action!

My first suggestion is to ask several real estate agents to give you free estimates of what your home could sell for, as is.

These days, people sometimes get pretty good prices for homes like yours, especially if they are on large sections. The new owner pulls down the house and builds several townhouses or similar. Or you might find someone looking for a large house and willing to put in the work to fix it.

Hopefully, you’ll find you would get a high enough price to buy a small unit, or some other smaller home that’s easy to take care of. The agents should be able to give you info on the prices of those options too.

If that’s not going to work, you need to find money from somewhere to fix your current home — either to make it more sellable or to make it better for you to live in. I suggest you go to the MoneyTalks website and arrange an appointment with a financial mentor.

This service is funded by the Ministry of Social Development and is free. “There are 800 financial mentors across 180 services all around the motu,” says a spokesperson. Go to moneytalks.co.nz and click on Find Help Now.

A mentor will help you with your finances in many ways, including:

●Budgeting. I’m not saying you budget badly. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn you are excellent at stretching your dollars. But pretty much everybody can make some improvements.

●Paying down debt, if that applies to you.

●Finding out if you qualify for any other financial help from the Government. “A strength of a financial mentor is their knowledge regarding Winz, eligibility, and what is available to the client, and assist in applying for them,” says Team Lead Ange Smart. “Eligibility criteria can often change. Therefore when someone may have not been able to receive an allowance previously...