Half owning a home?

[MamaPingu]

Hello!
A lady I know was telling me she half owns a home. She pays half mortgage/half rent? That sort of thing!
Then she can pay extra money to slowly own a larger percentage of the house and eventually own it fully. She said it was for people on low incomes.

Can you still do this?
I tried searching online but I'm not sure what I'm looking for!

I think this would be ideal as I'd love to own a home but with being a single parent this may be a possibility if I can't earn enough to have a full mortgage.

[lessonsintightropes]

Try googling 'shared ownership' - whereabouts do you live? It's usually administered by housing associations and you'll need to meet certain criteria around income etc.

[MamaPingu]

Ooh brill thankyou! I live in South Yorkshire, I'll have a look!

[lessonsintightropes]

It's well worth doing your sums (I work for a housing association!) as in some places, the part rent and the mortgage payment added together (along with the inevitable service charge) cost more than buying somewhere outright. It makes financial sense in London where the income to house-sale price is so huge as a multiple, but if your bit of South Yorkshire is still relatively affordable, it might actually just be cheaper to buy somewhere.

[MamaPingu]

Thankyou I've found what I was looking for!

The only thing I'm not sure on is if you can pick which house, or if it is only certain homes you can do it with?

[lessonsintightropes]

There are heaps of different schemes - but usually you can only do it on specific properties that the housing association has specially built for this purpose. There was a product a few years ago called DIYSO (DIY shared ownership) which you could use to finance an existing property, but I'm pretty sure they've stopped doing this now.

[yellowsnownoteatwillyou]

I used to have one, I bought it thru the normal channels and just had to be a first time buyer to be accepted by the housing association. They don't come up for sale very often but you can keep and eye out for new builds, it can sometimes come under affordable housing. If there are any new housing estates being built they have to build affordable ones as well. It's the same criteria. You would still need a min 10% deposit.

[Anifrangapani]

It is called shared ownership. You buy an initial share - typically 50% and pay rent on the remaining un bought share. You can then buy further tranches of the property through staircasing. Depending on the property you may not be able to staircase to 100% - rural properties will have a clause in the lease that prevents the property being lost to the social sector.

You will need to apply direct to the Housing Association - Home, Guinness, Sanctuary, Great Places and Places for People are all developing at the moment so may have properties.

To qualify you need to be earning less than 60K household income and in some areas of the country you will have to have some other qualifying housing need - it depends on how accute the housing shortage is in a particular area.

There is also another product Help to Buy that you could have a look at - up to 20% of the deposit is funded through government funding. You need to check with the developer building the site if the property is in the scheme. Most of the main house builders are signed up, and lots of smaller developers too - they will have a H2B sign on the development.

There are further details on the Gov.uk or Homes and Communities Agency websites.

Hope you find a suitable property!