Help,selling house I'm on long term sick

Mumbles111
Mumbles111 Online Community Member Posts: 1 Listener
in Universal Credit (UC)

Hi I'm selling my house that I inherited of my late father, who I lived with. I have numerous medical conditions and I'll never be able to work again in on 8 different medications including high strength opioids. The house I'm in is a big house it costs a lot to heat and maintain and the garden is too big to look after with my conditions. I want to buy a smaller house it says for example I sold my house for 230k and I bought a small house for 170k there's 60k left over. I'm on universal credit lwrca and pip . Am I allowed to keep the extra 60 k for future repairs because how will I pay for maintenance and repairs ect as I own my own property. Where am I going to get money from for repairs if I have no money. Will the people in power let me keep the money for repairs in the future when needed ? Any help would be grateful thank you. I get lwrca and pip. What do I do if boilers need repairing or replacing,roofs, kitchens,bathrooms ect .

Comments

  • Kimi87
    Kimi87 Online Community Member Posts: 8,647 Championing

    Your PIP will be unaffected, but your Universal Credit would end due to having more than £16k in capital.

  • Stellar
    Stellar Online Community Member Posts: 407 Pioneering

    you're not allowed to keep more than 16k in savings on UC. Anything over requires you to close your claim and live off the savings. Once you're under 16k, you can reclaim UC.

    you can ask UC to apply a temporary disregard while you buy a smaller property, so your claim can continue in the meantime. The best way to go about this is to sell your current property then buy a home so that you're as close to 16k as possible within the time limit. Hence, you don't risk having to close your UC claim and go through the LCRWA process again.

    UC are really strict on the 16k saving limit, there's no way around it.

  • Santosha12
    Santosha12 Online Community Member Posts: 3,946 Championing

    Hello @mumbles111 and a very warm welcome to you. I'm very sorry for the loss of your father and I imagine it's difficult to go through a house move while you're trying to manage your own health conditions and stay as stable, healthwise, as possible.

    I'm not an expert on benefits but I think the maximum savings you can have is £16,000 and then the UC claim is closed (savings of between £6,000 and £16,000 have a deduction from UC each month). I don't believe that affects your LCWRA or PIP at all. Once your savings drop to below the £16,000 level you then reapply for UC. Hopefully someone else will come along here who knows the figure for deductions.

    I don't know of a way that enables you to keep any profit from the sale separate for house repairs as I believe the £16k figure still applies I'm afraid.

    I believe that any essential house repairs will not count as deprivation of your savings by UC so you wouldn't get penalised by them for spending on repairs if you later reapply for UC but I think you'd be expected to live off the LCWRA and PIP income, and savings, in the meantime. It would be important to keep all receipts for expenditure as UC may want to see that, should you reapply.

    Hope that all makes sense Mumbles111, sorry not as concise as it could be! Hopefully, others here may have better ideas/more knowledge. With very warmest wishes to you and take care.

  • Kimi87
    Kimi87 Online Community Member Posts: 8,647 Championing
    edited April 10

    LCWRA is part of Universal Credit so the same capital rules apply. Only PIP is unaffected by capital.

    The capital deduction is £4.35 for every £250 over £6k, or part thereof up until £16k when entitlement ceases.

  • Santosha12
    Santosha12 Online Community Member Posts: 3,946 Championing

    Sorry @Mumbles111 I didn’t know that about LCWRA, thought I did 🙄. Sorry if I've confused the issue, @Kimi87 will definitely be correct.

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