When the care home place comes first and the house comes second
Almost nobody plans this one. A parent goes into hospital, comes out needing residential care, and within a fortnight you’re being asked how the fees will be paid — while the house sits in Llanishen or Rumney or Ely, full of forty years of belongings, with nobody in it.
We’re David & Jason, and we buy houses across Cardiff. Families in exactly this position are some of the most common people we speak to. Here’s how the money side actually works, and where selling fits in.
What Cardiff Council will and won’t pay
Care funding in Wales works differently from England, and the difference matters.
The capital limit in Wales is £50,000. If the person going into residential care has capital — savings, investments and, in most cases, the value of their home — above that figure, they’re expected to fund their own care. Below it, the local authority contributes on a means-tested basis. Wales sets this limit considerably higher than England does, so it’s worth checking the current figure with Cardiff Council rather than assuming an English number you’ve read online.
The house usually counts as capital — but not always, and not immediately. It’s disregarded entirely if a spouse, partner, or a relative who is over 60 or disabled still lives there. That single rule changes the whole picture, so establish it first.
The 12-week property disregard. When someone moves into permanent residential care and their home would otherwise push them over the limit, the value of the property is ignored for the first 12 weeks. The council contributes during that window. It exists precisely so families aren’t forced into a panic sale.
Twelve weeks sounds generous. It isn’t. A Cardiff sale through an estate agent takes six to twelve months end to end in the current market. The disregard runs out long before completion, and from week 13 the full fee falls to the family.
Deferred payment agreements. If the house hasn’t sold, Cardiff Council can offer a deferred payment agreement — effectively a loan against the property, repaid when it’s eventually sold. It’s a genuine safety net and worth asking about. Be clear-eyed about it though: interest accrues, there are administration fees, and the debt grows every month the house sits unsold.
Why these sales are hard on the open market
The house that needs selling in this situation is rarely the house that sells easily.
It’s usually been lived in by one person for decades. The kitchen is original. The boiler is old. There’s a gas fire where the fireplace was, artex on the ceilings, and a garden that got away from them in the last few years. Buyers with a mortgage want none of that — and their lender may not either. A property with no working heating or serious damp can be declined outright.
Meanwhile the meter is running: care fees from week 13, plus council tax, insurance, and standing charges on an empty house. Every month of “let’s see if we get a better offer” has a real number attached to it.
And the emotional weight is genuine. Clearing a parent’s home while they’re adjusting to a care setting is one of the hardest jobs families do. Stretching it across a year of viewings and fall-throughs doesn’t make it easier.
Where we fit
We buy Cardiff houses directly, as they are.
- An offer within a day, no obligation, on the house exactly as it stands.
- Completion in 7 to 28 days — inside the 12-week disregard, which is the whole point.
- We clear the house free of charge. You take what matters to the family; we deal with the rest. No skips, no house-clearance bill, no weekends spent sorting.
- No fees and no commission. We cover the legal costs, yours included.
- We work with solicitors and attorneys all the time. If you’re acting under a Lasting Power of Attorney or a deputyship, that’s familiar ground — we’ll work at whatever pace the paperwork allows.
The trade-off, honestly stated: our offer is below full open-market value. What it buys is a completion date you can plan around, inside the window the council gives you, with no clearance costs and no fees deducted at the end.
Do the sums before you decide
This isn’t automatically the right answer, and we’d rather you worked it out than took our word for it.
Compare the open-market figure, minus estate agent commission, minus your legal fees, minus care fees from week 13 until it actually completes, minus council tax and insurance on an empty house, minus whatever the clearance and any repairs cost — against our figure, with a date attached.
Some families are better off waiting. If the house is modern, in good order, and there’s a deferred payment agreement holding things steady, take the time. Many aren’t — particularly where the house needs work, or where a deferred payment is quietly compounding against an estate the family will inherit.
One thing worth saying plainly: get proper financial advice before deciding. A regulated adviser specialising in care fees can tell you things we can’t, and should. We’re property buyers, not financial advisers.
The bottom line
The 12-week disregard is a window, not a solution. If the house is going to fund the care, the practical question is whether it can sell inside that window — and on the open market in Cardiff right now, it usually can’t.
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