Shared Ownership

[redfox5]

Sat here staring at the phone and constantly checking my inbox to see the housing association have decided if we can have this house or not.

We've been trying to get various different ones over the past year with no success, we always pass the money side, just fail on the 'need side' mainly because we privately rent and have no children. But we do want to start our own family but the average price of a two bedroom house around here is £300,000 and we can't buy one on the open market.

I really hope it we get it as at least some of our money will be going somewhere other than just a landlords pocket but at the same time I get annoyed that out rent and mortgage would be much more than if we were just paying a mortgage. I know alot of people don't stay in them long but I just want somewhere I can stay put! I want somewhere, where I can have my cat come live with me(currently at my parents) and where I can actually put things on the walls!

Does anyone else have a shared ownership house and does it work for you? What is your experiences with it?

[LadyDebs86]

I bought a shared ownership house in 2007 and it was one of the best things we ever did.

We no longer live there although we do still own it and have rented it out, we bought it outright in 2012 and bought another house in the next town over. I don't think we would be in the position we are in now if we hadn't bought SO. Good luck

[familyofthree]

I have my fingers crossed for you, hope it all works out.

I have a shared ownership house and we have been here 5 years now. It was the only way that we could afford a house of our own, we were only 'allowed' to buy a 2 bedroom as OH & I had no children at that time, we now have a DS, so if we do decide to try for more children then we are going to have to look at moving up to a bigger place.
We purposely got the house/mortgage in my name only so that in future my OH could possibly look at applying for a similar scheme if we were still in the same position with not being able to afford the level of deposit required now. We were only able to afford the 5% on our current home due to a small inheritance from when my dad passed away.
Our mortgage payments are nearly half what we were paying in rent for the flat we were living in. The only downside is when anything needs doing costs are all your responsibility... its the only thing we miss about renting, lol!

[Guest]

Hi, good luck and I hope you are successful

My first home was a shared-equity home, so a little different as didn't have to pay a rent element, but the HA owned a percentage of the equity. It worked out great for us in the long-run. We bought when I was on maternity leave with DD, and I was due to go back part-time so the affordability of the mortgage was a lot greater than buying a place ourselves. We would have maybe managed to buy a 2 bedroom flat/small house, but the shared equity scheme allowed us to buy a 3 bedroom larger house with a big garden too. A couple of years later I went back to full time work in a better paid position, so we were managing to save a fair bit of money each month and six years later we bought a lovely detached 4-bedroom house and our mortgage payments are a lot lower too

[princessgem]

OH's mum has been in hers for five years its worked perfectly for her.

We are in the process of buying it off her, we have moved in, just waiting for the mortgage to go through. We were lucky as she wrote to the housing association recommending us and they were happy for us to buy.
If we weren't using shared ownership we would be buying a small one bed flat in the next town which I wouldn't have been happy with, we have rented for a few years in a one bed flat and it's just too small.

[Guest]

We passed up a shared ownership flat as we needed the same deposit for a one bad flat for 70% ownership, whereas if we waited a year and moved to the next town, we could have bought one 100%.

Best of luck OP, hope you get it!

[redfox5]

Thank you! It's so nice to hear some positive stories! When I was googling last night it was just all negative things and started to make me worried!

Still nothing from them. I hope they call soon and say yes - I've already mentally moved in lol.

[Rataouille92]

Good luck!

We luckily secured a shared ownership house a few weeks ago out of 5 applicants. The house should be ready early may. We only have a 40% share at the moment but there is no other way for us to get on the ladder.

I know 2 others doing this and it works fine. I hope you get the house!

[Elodie]

We bought shared ownership in 2007 and are currently looking at buying the other 50%.

It's a lovely three bed detached house in a nice area that we are happy to stay in and could never have bought otherwise. I don't know how it works exactly, but the housing association bought it for £150k and then we bought 50% for £60k. Either someone can't add up, or we got a great deal! (I believe it was actually subsidised by the government.)

It was handy to keep costs down at first too, as the rent was around £100 per month less than the mortgage. Now we've got a very good mortgage rate and the rent has been going up every year, so it's the other way round and we pay a lot more in rent than in mortgage. It will cost us around £2k in fees to buy the other half, so we need to buy the entire remaining 50% rather than have to pay the fees again every time we buy more of the share.

Unfortunately, we've done lots to the house (it was a new build with a mud and rubble garden full of builders' rubbish and no gates, bare concrete floors inside, etc, when we bought it.) We decorated inside and planted trees, lawn, flower beds, pond etc outside to make it nice to live in, but it means the half we now want to buy has risen massively in value. That's really the only issue I have with shared ownership - the fact that anything you do to improve your house will cost you twice over if you ever come to buy the other half.

Good luck!

[redfox5]

I didn't think about improvements like that!

I was kinda hoping that by the time we came to buy extra shares - the housing market would drop and we could buy the rest at lower value but I guess it works both ways.

I've not heard anything from them all day, I've called and emailed.

I'm not sure if this is a good or bad sign. On Friday they were asking about details for our solicitors and said they couldn't see any reason why the housing association would say no. I got the impression they were very keen to allocate as quickly as possible. The silence is worrying.