Sell or rent our house (shared ownership)?

Cat Melodeon

My siblings and I all equally own our deceased parents' home. I've been living here for the past few years paying a nominal rent and taking care of maintenance and some upgrading of the property. It's now time for me to move (work reasons) and we don't really know what to do with the place.

We own it outright. It's a 4-bed detached bungalow located on the edge of a fairly popular village with neighbours close on either side. It has a small enough front garden and almost 2 acres of garden and fields behind it (no road frontage, access only through the front gate so the land can't be sold separate to the house). The house itself isn't fantastic - single glazed windows, poor enough insulation, dual OFCH and solid-fuel range (clearly this is not an advert for the house!). Structurally it is completely sound. It also has a bathroom, shower room, kitchen-diner & living room, an outside utility room & office and 3 big enough sheds.

Personally I think we should put it up for sale immediately. Some of the family want to rent it out for a year and then make a decision on what to do with it. As far as I see it, to make it rentable, we'd need to redo some of it completely, including some new appliances & furniture - I'm guessing an outlay of at least €3k. I'm also wary of other expenses like insurance, repairs etc as none of us have much in the way of disposable income, and who is going to look after the place if either we can't rent it or our tenant runs into problems - none of us will be living within 50km of the place.

We'd be lucky to get €600 rent/month for it. It's hard to estimate how much it would go for if we sold it - we had it valued a couple of years ago and were given a ridiculously inflated price - but at the same time, although the house itself isn't great, the land behind it is attractive to the right buyer (horsey type rather than developer) as most of the houses in the area that used to have land attached sold it off as sites during the boom. 3-beds on tiny plots in the village proper are still going for about 195-220k and there is still some demand as there's a good school and we're close to the nearby town.

So what would you do? How would you convince sentimental family members to sell rather than rent, or would you? My head's a bit wrecked with this.

Johversloe

hey cat,
I am in the very same situation as yourself. after 4 years of constant arguing i am looking for a forced sale. My 2 siblings dont wanna put any money into the house for repairs NOR sell..
keep me in the loop as i am interested in hearing the outcome
Johversloe