to buy my housing association home?

[wheredyaparklouissss]

House is worth £100,000. I pay £400/month in rent. I love my home and want to remain here forever. Would you buy it? Or keep renting? What are the advantages or disadvantages?

Yep
I have four DC , all adults, but only the youngest lives with Me in my Social Housing House
I have put him on the list as He has the right to stay put here when I die. He would not be able to pass it down as its allowed once.

Look at it this way. If you buy, all the money you pay for the mortgage is towards an asset you will own and can pass to your daughter. 100K is very reasonable, but do double check sold prices in the area to ensure you can sell on in the future. Hopefully, it will grow in value.

Most people telling you not to buy into social housing are likely property owners already. I was once told the same by a lawyer who came to my ex-council flat before she even walked in. And she came to choose funeral music for a friend, so really uncouth on so many levels!

As to your dilemma OP I always remember my Mum saying to Me that, though I could buy a small house or indeed this house, when she dies she personally would not recommend I do.
Mainly due to what another poster posted about any repairs , boiler checks etc etc is down to you if you were to buy.

Buying can be an investment for the future but it's also risky.

Couple of things to think of - monthly repayments could be much higher than your current rent (you'd need to speak to a mortgage adviser to find out exactly), and could increase significantly at short notice due to interest rate rises (unlike rental increases which are capped). If you have financial difficulty and you're late paying rent you're possibly less likely to be evicted than getting behind on your mortgage.

Also, bear in mind that you usually can't get housing benefit to help pay your mortgage - this was a huge problem for a friend of mine who bought and then needed to take time out of work to care for a child with undiagnosed special needs. It was incredibly difficult but if she'd still been renting she would have got more help.

"neoliberal economics" is exactly includes ridiculous policies, such selling off state assets, such as HA and council houses... Giving a one off windfall gain.

Don't forget it was the mistress of neoliberalism, who brought this genius idea

Then, once the state is hollowed out, the private sector creeps in.

You can't be against neoliberalism and yet for the privatisation of state assets to an individual...

Buy it, all day long.

I honestly and truly don't khow those who are lucky enough to own there own home have the absolute gall to tell someone else they dont deserve the same luck.
Lack of social housing and the over inflated market is not down to the sale of council or h/a houses.

Me either. Beggars belief, doesn’t it? The ignorance and privilege blows my mind.

Your son is lucky you had the foresight to do this my
Sil,died suddenly her three children were aged 19,,10 and 3 they lived in their mum's housing association house with her her 19 yr old got full residency of the two younger children ,but she couldn't succeed her mum's tenancy ,they did get a house because obviously they were in dire,straits but not the house they lived inside their mum as there were too many rooms ,there are so many misconceptions about social housing .

You've missed the point.

HAs are private / NFPs.

If OP stays in her house they get her rent bit also all the on costs every month. That house remains unavailable to the market for as long as she remains.

If she buys it they get a cash sum towards another property and another family can be housed.

That's how HAs are supposed to work. That's why they have all the part ownership, sell back, profit payback schemes built in. They are neither sheltered housing not council housing.

Mostly they are not PPE contracts. And things have changed in the decades since Thatcher decimated social housing etc.

Apologies, they are NOT NFPs.

And they quite like selling off property that may need maintenance.

My mum lives in the HA house I grew up in. I would say don't buy, and did say so to her. (As it turned out, the inheritance she was supposed to receive which would have been enough to get a mortgage on our family home got eaten up in unrelated healthcare and legal fees, so she couldn't anyway in the end).

I'd love to say, fuck it, you deserve to buy a home at a reasonable price, protect yourself and the politics aren't your problem personally. But that still leaves fewer and fewer social housing homes available and while that isn't any prospective buyer's fault, it is our collective responsiblity not to keep worsening the country. IMO.

@housemaus but thst is achieved by creating and implementing an effective policy - a complex thing - to support a social housing model. That requires all sorts of things to happen.

to think that the OP - by herself choosing not to buy a property - is an effective way to influence the social housing market is frankly an unbelievably dumb thing to say.

not least because it puts a massively disproportionate wealth sacrifice on an exiting housing association tenant. For no real benefit on a wider scale.

the simplistic comments on this thread are why the housing problem won’t be solved . Because so many people
in the electorate are trotting out ill thought through demands re social housing thst are so simplistic.

What’s the quality of the build like? I’m in a HA property and I think it was knocked up as a practice job by a couple of the apprentice bricklayers. There isn’t a straight wall in the place, I can see daylight between the window frames and the windows and although I’ve been lucky enough to have a new kitchen put in, I spent a week listening to the kitchen fitters talking to each other about what a bodge job everything was. I’d be mad to buy it all the time I get repairs included in my rent.

Have you got a secure tenancy? Can you decorate and make changes with permission? If so, I wouldn’t do it. Having said that, I would have bought the council house I grew up in like a shot had my mum not been so anti the sale of social housing.

The ''leave it as social housing'' comment is just silly.

The house would not be available for anyone else to rent for years anyway as it sounds like the OP intends to live in that house for a long time. It is also not up to her to fix the issue of a chronic lack of affordable housing ...That's the government's job.

OP, go for it. You already know the area and are happy there. if there is the option of buying at a discount price it sounds perfect. As long as you can afford any repairs and the mortgage then it would be a good idea.

I do agree to be careful re the condition of the property though

Completely agree. Staunch socialist, detest right to buy (without reinvestment in housing stock) But something about people sitting on their equity with their gifted deposits, trying to make some one else feel guilty for taking advantage of an isolated piece of luck, in what is no doubt a far less privileged life, really grinds my gears.

In my rural area of Scotland the waiting lists aren’t huge for the rural villages but much longer for the towns. No longer allowed to buy HA in Scotland

But still have lifetime tenancies which can be transferred to spouse on death

Where'd you bring it?

I don't see why people are banging on about leaving it as social housing, what difference does it make if she buys it or lives in it for 50 years? Same thing.

Buy it but be aware that as it appreciates many people will feel you deserve to pay an extra tax for the luxury of owning your own home. People talk about fairness but surely social house isn't fair.

@5128gap
"Completely agree. Staunch socialist, detest right to buy (without reinvestment in housing stock) But something about people sitting on their equity with their gifted deposits, trying to make some one else feel guilty for taking advantage of an isolated piece of luck, in what is no doubt a far less privileged life, really grinds my gears."

"Gifted deposits"? What are those? Back in the real world .... scrimping and saving while having to pay extortionate rent to private landlords as there's not a hope of social housing because it's all been sold off!!!!

Oh that is so sad . 😥

I care for a Lady in her own home and its a 3 bedroom (as once there was Her, Her Mum and sister and 2 brothers in there) She has lived there for many years and I can only assume her Mother passed it on to Her as the other siblings are married and live elsewhere .

Totally agree. The people I know who are the snottiest about us buying our council house, tend to be the neo socialists who have the mortgage paid off and plenty of spare cash, who like to pretend to give a shit.
No way could we have afforded a house where we live, and we will live here until we die, which we would have done anyway. who knows what will have happened to housing by then?

I bought mine . My mortgage is a few hundred pounds less per month than the rent I used to pay.
it’s the only way I could’ve bought a house . I wouldn’t have got a mortgage to buy one on the open market .
Yes you have to pay for repairs - but that’s just something you accommodate for with your wages like any other person who owns a house.
Go for it .