'AITA for buying my fifth property rather than help out my siblings?' UPDATED 2X

"AITA for buying my fifth property rather than help out my siblings?"

For context, even when I (44M) was a child I was incredibly into owning property and designing houses. I work as an architect and am doing quite well for myself. Bought my first duplex here in Germany along time ago where I rent out both part. Then I own two houses in Italy and one in Spain.

Two of them are get rented out as Holiday homes while the last one I use for vacations and rent out a room to a friend of mine. So I have a lot of passive income at the moment, but only after a lot of time and money investments and refurbishing of these houses. (I rent in NYC at the moment as my job has moved made me move here temporarily).

My brother (48M) does have an apartment. He has a family with two kids while my wife and I are childless. They are currently looking to purchase a house that fits all of them nicely.

While they have found their dream house, its out of budget for them. Meanwhile, my wife and I are about to buy our 5th house, this time in France. It's going to be one of our largest purchases yet, significantly larger than anything else we have done. Its a great deal on the property however, and ideally what my wife and I want to retire in.

When having a family facetime with my siblings and parents, I brought it up. Initially very happy for me, my brother mentioned how he needs a larger home for his family and how I should give up on this opportunity to give him money for his house and spend the rest on refurbishing their new home. I just laughed and said flat out no. (Thought this was a joke)

This was apparently the wrong move, my entire family turns against me and starts berating me. After 10 minutes of them taking turns telling me to buy my brother a house, I said I'd think about it and left.

I am a bit of a pushover so after talking to my wife we agreed we could wait and buy their house and rent it out to them at no profit. Apparently this was insulting to him, having his younger brother be his landlord and my parents said I should just outright give him the money we have been saving.

I told em to piss off, and started moving forward with the paperwork on our house in France. After talking to my friends, they said I should put family first and its not like we are struggling for money. Now I am confused, AITA?

Here's what people had to say:

redblackyellowjam said:

NTA. You shouldn’t have to pay for your brother’s house. He should live within his means. Besides, money between family members can be a more dividing issue than most.

MaeClementine said:

NTA at all. FWIW, I'm your brother in my life. I have two kids in an apartment and just can't afford to purchase what we need right now.

My SIL just bought her third home and I'll admit there's always twinges of jealousy and the fleeting thought that it'd be nice if she'd help us out. But that's just me being a brat. Obviously I'm not entitled to someone else's money.

nonanonaye said:

Absolutely NTA and on top of that, beggars can't be choosers. I find it insulting that they were insulted that you offered to buy their dream house and rent it to them for zero profit

[deleted] said:

YTA. I don't think you are necessarily an a**hole to your brother, but you're definitely an a**hole for screwing with economies of countries you don't even live in by buying up properties then either leaving them empty or renting them out as 'vacation houses' (AirBnB, almost certainly), therefore taking up needed space and pricing out locals.

Having lived in both Europe and America, the n t a s you're getting are from Americans, mostly, who see this level of greed as morally neutral at worst. Nobody should own five f**%ing houses.

Kinlance said:

NTA. First off, I believe when there's an expectation of gratitude to the point of getting upset at not receiving it, it becomes greed. Plain old selfish greed. It's admirable you decided to turn the biggest gain in your home owning "career" thus far, into a gift for your family, with a very reasonable landlord agreement.

They are being ridiculously entitled for just assuming their better off relatives are obligated to give them a house for free.

FoucaultEscapement said:

YTA for sucking wealth out of countries that aren't your own.

Update:

My brother turned out not to be telling us the whole truth. A week after the post his Wife calls me asking to reconsider. Turns out there was a reason, but my brother didn't want to tell me. So I told her, either he tells me himself or I won't even consider anything.

A week later he ends up calling and tells me everything. It turns out he had developed a bit of a gambling problem the last two years and has taken a noticeable % out of their savings gambling. Less than 40% but more than 15% according to him.

The dream house was now a lot further out of reach than it was meant to be. Apparently he has been going to therapy for it for months but the financial damage it did set them back far.

My parents knew since the start, and I knew my brother was having martial problems a couple year ago but I never asked why as he and his wife were very secretive about details. Turns out this was the problem.

Apparently my parents had told him to ask me but ask too much from me, so when he rebutted with smaller ask I would be more inclined to accept. Had an incredibly harsh conversation with my parents, they feel like I owe the family and its more their money than mine since they raised me. That's a whole different problem.

I told him about the post and he was mad at first but understood my position after reading through it. After a pretty difficult conversation with him, I offered the rent at cost and once he has built up his savings, we will sell him the house minus any rent he has paid over the time it takes. Some people mentioned this, rent to own. He happily accepted.

And now its today. Hopefully we can have a reunion when things get better and laugh about this.

EDIT: A lot of people are worried about the legalities, I am having my lawyer draft it up. Everything will be in writing

Update #2, 2 years later:

For the most part, I think the last two years have been overall s#$%.

We ended up selling our business to a different firm in Germany. World conditions made it difficult for us to setup our sourcing and after not working on any projects for a couple months, we decided to pull the plug when we got an offer. Not really doing anything since that, but we sold it at a profit, so going to explore our options for a while.

Before we sold it, my brother and his wife ended up divorcing. As did my mother and my father. I mentioned prior that my father had a gambling addiction when we were younger and that my parents reaction to the whole mess confused me at the time.

It turns out that my mother had forced my father to give his entire paycheck and some. So he had turned to gambling by her suggestion. She is a very "Holier than thou" type of person, so to hear she suggested gambling was insane to me.

But it turns out she is inherently very financially abusive. They almost divorced in the past but she stopped pestering my father as much. He thought she had become better.

But it turns out that good things never last, and when my brother started working she started demanding similar things. And apparently later using me as reference that I too had been sending her money and my success was driven by the motivation to provide to myself and her. (I moved abroad quite early, so my 1:1 connection with my brother was limited)

She later pushed him onto gambling and he fell head first. After the house situation, he had stopped for a couple of months but relapsed pretty quickly with local gambling machines. Then switched to buying prepaid cards to gamble online again.

My father claims to have had no idea it was occurring but he was plenty happy with vacations paid by a stay at home wife? His pressure on me to buy him a house? He filed for divorce but I blame him equally at this point.

My brothers wife filed for divorce shortly after it all came to light. Only once he filed did he tell her about our mom was doing. I reached out to him to provide support but he told me to fuck off and never speak to him again. He lives with his girlfriend now and still gambles according to his wife.

His wife is still in the house. We have stopped payments, she already worked part time but I don't want to cut into her expenses. I guess the only good thing is cheap interest rates on that mortgage. I've cut contact with both my father and mother and I guess got contact cut by my brother. I feel like my father divorced my mom in hopes I would take him in.

We have since moved into our house here in France. I am still not a fan of french people but I guess I called this upon myself. My wife is thriving here and with the retired/unemployed life. I have mostly been online or in my workshop.

I think a combination of boredom, world conditions, and my lost faith in my family have disenfranchised me a bit. Been wanting to provide an update for about a year, since we sold the company but after the family news, I was always hoping for some good twist or good news here at the end.

Reading my original post back, I feel like I had a tendency to focus on my own problems. How everything that happened to me, was one of life's many trials. But I realize now, that often you are just a side character in other people's trials, and your success has more to do with right time / right place.

Anywho, bit off tangent here. Just providing an update for those who follow me on here. Thanks to those who provided support and thanks to those who helped open my eyes.