Shared Ownership - is there snobbery?

[Mydreamofhomeownership]

Does anyone have any experience of Shared Ownership?

Basically my story is I owned my own home with ex-husband until 8 years ago when we split. We had to sell and pay off debt so I had no equity to buy again, I've rented ever since.

Through hard saving I've managed to save enough for a deposit on a shared ownership property. I live in an expensive area and this is the only way I'll realistically ever be able to own my own home again.

I can afford the repayments and the rent element, plus the service charge. It's all less than I currently pay in rent. I'm in the application process and don't want to get my hopes up too much.

Does anyone have any experience of the process and the likelihood of acceptance/rejection.

Also, and probably my AIBU. How do you feel about shared ownership? There are a small group of houses under the scheme on an otherwise quite expensive but small development of 3, 4 and 5 bed houses. Will the 'proper' home owners look down their noises at me?

However I would do your research. Shared ownership can have funny rules that can make it a bit of a trap. Watch out for:

• clauses allowing the rent element to escalate rapidly
• prohibitive conditions on you selling it (only via the scheme, to a very restricted market, valuations done by the scheme)
• funny clauses on staircasing (valuations done only by scheme, extra hidden costs & fees, your mortgage providers conditions etc).

For some people it works very well, some people and up regretting it, so don't rush in. You rarely get "something for nothing", if it's looking like cheap "win-win" option you are probably missing something.

shared ownership was fab for me in London, got on the housing ladder in a lovely new house, staircased over a couple of years and made enough on it when I sold to buy open market next. I also work delivering S/O all over the country now and we try and make the spec match the private units as much as possible as ultimately they can be regular fully owned properties at the end of the day. they're seen as posh compared to the rented houses.

You are over-thinking this, OP. Being able to afford the mortgage, the rent, service charge is admirable and no one will look down on you.

You will probably be paying the same as those who have a 100% mortgage, due to the rent.

I lived in a shared ownership flat. There were also full home owners in the building, and tenants. I didn't experience any snobbery from the non shared ownership owners.

No snobbery and for many now it’s the only way people can get on the market. Just check you can staircase out, for some you can’t but even so it’s still possible to make a profit.

Not at all but I think these schemes can prove not that great over time/quite expensive so would think that was probably difficult for you

Look at it as a handy detector test - anyone who's snobby about it, shows themselves to be someone you probably don't want to bother knowing! Could save you some time

Probably about half the amount of snobbery than if you were fully renting 🙄

Depends where you are in all honesty. In a lot of London areas you often have millionnaires and shared ownership owners in the same building. You do need to accept some contractual snobbery (eg being unable to use certain / same facilities etc)

No snobbery from me either, but I do agree with the PPs who said to be wary of exactly what you're getting into. I used to work for an estate agent and we had a shared ownership property on our books for almost a year before it sold. It was a beautiful house, at a great price, with a lovely, accommodating owner, who had actually bought under the same circumstances as you. Loads and loads of interest but once potential viewers found out it was shared ownership they all backed right off. She ended up selling at a loss and I was gutted for her.

There are those who buy on the development who will not understand that there is a difference between rented social housing and owner occupied shared ownership and if they don't understand it's their issue, not yours.

DH and I bought a SO new build 25 years ago. We only owned it for 3 years and didn't buy more than the 60% initial share. We had to allow the housing society 12 weeks to market the property and find a buyer - after that it could go on the open market and they would receive 40% of the profit (I think after costs). They found a buyer who was thrilled to be able to buy on the shared ownership scheme.

When the houses are built for a housing society there are strict rules that need to be followed and you can end up with a better build because of it and more space. Our 2 bed was the same size as an average 3 bed at the time because of the HO requirements.

Nothing at all to be snobby about.. You are doing something to better your life 😊

I was in a similar situation, split up with ExH and sold house and bought 25%share S/O in nice village. I moved after 5 years and hadn't staircased. As I owned only 25% it sold really easily to first time buyers- through the housing association in less than 10 weeks. I still sold for a profit.
The people that looked down on that were not people I would have chosen to be friends with anyway. There were a few but it didnt matter

I used to live in London and for many people shared ownership is the only way they will get on the housing ladder. People who turn their nose up at it either have no idea of how expensive houses are in some part of the country or theyre rich. Either way fuck them!

Just to add as some have experienced difficulty selling S/O, two near us have sold within the last six months as re-sales, one sold on the day it was listed and the other sold within a couple of days - so for this area, they sell very quickly.

As for trouble stair-casing, we didn't have any issues and it didn't seem overly complicated but there was extra fees - such as we had to pay £90 to the HA just to tell them we intended to buy the remaining shares. Other fees were things like paying for an independent valuation and the rest was the usual solicitors fees. So technically, you do end up paying solicitors fees twice, assuming you staircase in one go and not in stages - as you pay it all when you originally purchased then again when you staircase.

Please be careful with shared ownership. You don’t actually own anything it’s more of a down payment which allows you to purchase a 100% share of the property at a later date. There is a legal case where a woman was in rent arrears which meant the housing association could possess her property and they didn’t have to refund her share. Her share wasn’t mortgaged so there was no bank to kick off but she lost everything she had put in

Shared Ownership is getting more and more popular especially in expensive areas.It is just another scheme to get a foot on the property ladder like help to buy. A lot of buyers manage to get to the full 100% ownership or to sell at profit and then get a deposit for the next home.
Go for it,don't even think twice about "what the neighbours think"! You do you and consider yourself lucky if you can stop paying someone else mortgage.Good luck!

Do think twice, I think they are hard to sell. Often they are a fixed price when you come to sell them on. A friend of mine is trying to move out of shared ownership into a bigger house and had her offer turned down because the sellers felt the process was more convoluted and the shared ownership aspect would hold up the sale.

We live on a new build estate and I genuinely have not one clue who is SO who is Housing Association and who owns. Could not give a monkey’s. We own but I’m sure nobody knows or cares.

I did it, it got me out of a shared house. It’s expensive and I’ve yet to come across a decent housing association. I didn’t staircase and they can be hard to sell but I had a lovely flat for 4 years. Go into it with your eyes open. The non so flats had a concierge so they knew we were the poor relations but didn’t see them so no idea if they were snobs.

"There is a legal case where a woman was in rent arrears which meant the housing association could possess her property and they didn’t have to refund her share. Her share wasn’t mortgaged so there was no bank to kick off but she lost everything she had put in"

This was made very clear in our paperwork.

I don't understand why they class S/O as social housing.

When I bought our house the sales lady highlighted all the social housing in our block (one house down from ours) and checked this would be okay with us. We couldn't give a fuck!

OP, in a year that housing development plan will be replaced with the next phase and people won't remeber. If they do and are bothered about it, those opinons aren't worth caring about.

Yabu to worry about this!!

I think they're classed as social housing as you have to apply for it and there are strict criteria for who can qualify. I recently applied. They are classed as 'affordable'. Restrictions what you can do with them who you can sell them to and you need to live in them and not rent them out. The scheme is subsidised eg housing association can get grants to build which I guess is how they bring the prices down.

The only thing that would concern me is whether the property was well maintained. But that would apply to a social housing property, a wholly owned property or a rented or council property.