To be scared of shared ownership?

[Neverender]

Seems like an incredible opportunity to get on the ladder. Many people have warned me but they're not specific about their worries, more, "Well, you don't completely own it."

If you have a mortgage then you don't completely own it anyway?! 🤷‍♀️

Can any of you lovely people advise as to why it might be/is a scam and not a good idea?

Thank you!

@Pjmom72 and @Soffie89 are absolutely correct.

a lot of social housing tenants (me included) are part of that leasehold campaign.

First they came for the tenants and no one spoke up! #niemoller

www.betterretirementhousing.com/shared-equity-your-housing-group-retirement-flat-that-sold-for-38000-on-itv-tonight/

Shared equity Your Housing Group retirement flat that sold for £38,000 on ITV tonight.

A family who bought a shared equity retirement flat and lost £50,000 on its re-sale will feature on ITV tonight

Cath White’s mother bought 75% of the property at Your Housing Group’s Heyeswood Retirement Village, in Haydock, Merseyside in August 2015.

It sold three years later– after three years on the market – for £70,000, but additional fees amounted to more than £50,000.

They broke down as follows:
Service charges: £23,370.57
Sinking fund contribution: £5855.07
0.75% Administration Cost: £525
1% Reassignment fees: £700
Legal admin fees: £420

These leave the total proceeds of the sale at £39,129.26p.

These leave the total proceeds of the sale at £39,129.26p.

No subletting is allowed at the 92-flat Heyeswood Retirement Village by the Your Housing Group, a housing association, so the family has had to pay out the £6,600 a year service charges on an empty flat.

ITV is carrying its report a week after the Elderly Accommodation Counsel, a charity, produced a complex and date restricted analysis of recent retirement re-sales – and found property prices rose.

The Leasehold Knowledge Partnership / Better Retirement Housing deprecate this report, which includes unverifiable supposed “discount” data provided by retirement house builders. It urged non-publication on the grounds that the EAC was acting as a lobbyist for the house builders.

There is abundant evidence on the Land Registry of the appalling re-sale figures achieved when retirement properties are re-sold.

Better Retirement Housing has reported these at length

My mum had a total nightmare with shared ownership. In the end she had to sell up and move back in with her parents for a while! Rent went up loads each year and obviously there's nothing you can do about it, that along with other bills rising but no pay rise in years meant she just couldn't afford it anymore. I think she lived there for about 8 years, and came away with just a couple of grand from the sale. Also the HA that owned the other half were awful.

Housing associations do NOT come under FOI There was a petition for this which struggled to get signatures.

Owning something is much better than owning nothing. Shared ownership is great.

I'm work in mortgages and recommend it for people who don't quite have enough to get a mortgage for the house they want it's great.

It worked out brilliantly for us.

It meant we had a much better apartment, in a much nicer part of London than we could have afforded otherwise.

We didn’t staircase, but selling was a piece of piss. We had five prospective buyers lined up by the end of week. We made a very decent profit to plough into our next home.

The service company were a pain in the arse, but overall it was a great experience.

We sold when the market was buoyant, but it was the type of property that was always going to be desirable. I guess with brexit on the horizon it’s hard to know.

I’m in Scotland so if you’re not then it’s not really relevant to you but we used the open market shared equity scheme as after investigating shared ownership I decided it wasn’t worth it when you took rent payments into consideration. As it is we own 60% of a 4(!) bedroom end terrace and the Scottish government owns the rest but we don’t pay them anything until the time comes to sell.

I wouldn't buy a new build, since the rent percentage is worked out on the original sale price, so higher sales price higher rent. The contract (well ours anyway) restricts the increase each year to RPI, which is very low at the moment.

Also with resales everything about the house has settled, so you won't get any nasty surprises like cracks in the wall or damp and mould all down one side of an apartment high-rise after one or two years (both of these happened to relatives of mine).

With our place, when we come to sell we need to get a surveyor in to set a price, and then Hyde hosing have six weeks to get a buyer at that price. After six weeks if they haven't had offers from their end you can then put it on the open market at any price.

There's lots of advantages and disadvantages to SO; I love our house. It's cheaper than renting a similar place locally, we have a garden in an area that you don't normally, it had good proportions in terms of rooms and we've made over 20k in equity in less than two years (obviously depends on us selling at least at our old purchase price eventually).

Can't say Hyde have been bad/good, they just leave us alone. We'll see when it comes to selling how they are.

Share Owner Ship is good if you think you can buy all the shares sooner or later, but if you marriage is broke and you have to sell the house then there will be a problem,
Other thing is share ownership houses are like pay day loan companies, those payday loan companies (WONGA) like to rip there customers because they cannot get loans from any other company and have no choice except to get loan at higher interest rate.
Shared OwnerShip houses/flats are quite smaller then the rest of the properties, This is related to this topic but UK govt. should make law regarding building new houses or flats, which are way to small then the older ones.

Shared ownership is a really great way to help you on the property ladder.
I work for Aster (a Housing Association covering the South and South West) my job specifically is around marketing the properties (my area is actaully the resale homes)...
The idea is that you'd have an affordablity assessment to work out how much you could afford to buy and what you would be able to get a mortgage on and you'd pay a rent on the remaining amount...You will have the option to then purchase more of the property and eventually, in most cases, you can own 100% of that property - your home!

There is a lease on these properties but once you have purchased the whole property in a lot of cases you can also purchase the lease. This is all of course depending on the terms of your lease.

I'm happy to answer any questions you have 😊 Feel free to pop me an email [email protected] or take a look at our website.. www.aster.co.uk

WOW

genesisresidents.org.uk/uncategorized/leasehold-debate-in-parliament-on-thursday-5-sept-call-on-your-mp-to-be-there/?fbclid=IwAR3Fet7-WRbTLszKk9ocLZz23sv7J6kkF67xkOtc69FhQV1vdaoDQxVdn90

It's a bit of a 'how long's a piece of string' question. I wouldn't say SO is a scam but you do need to do your research very carefully. If you're wanting to stay in a particular house for a long time (or as long as the leasehold lasts) it could be a good option. You may struggle to be in a sound financial position to move if you change your mind or your circumstances change in a couple of years time. I expect the amount of people who make a fast profit on shared ownership and move onto a better property within a few years are in the minority and most likely live in certain areas of London.

I tend to view buying a house as an investment, so would always veer towards buying a freehold in a less desirable area, living in it for a few years whilst doing it up to (hopefully sell on for a profit) to fund moving to a nicer area.