Wasn't sure whether to post this here or in Property. It's quite long-winded so please bear with me.
DP and I have a mortgage for 40% of our flat. The rest is owned by our housing association, who we also pay a substantial amount of rent and service charge to. We bought our place under the Key Worker Scheme as DP is a teacher.
He has been offered a job about 100 miles away and as a result has had to resign from his current job in order to give the required 3 months notice. We have burnt our bridges, so to speak and have to move by September when his new job starts. We are putting our flat on the market this week. As the housing association owns 60% they get exclusive rights to sell our house for the first 6-8 weeks. If after this time they have not found a buyer it is then up to us to go through an estate agent.
So far so bad... except we've been testing the waters with estate agents in the area and they have told us in no uncertain terms that they won't touch shared ownership with a bargepole and didn't know of any who would. When i mentioned this fact to the resales agent at our housing association 'well there are estate agents who deal with it.' but she couldn't give me any names. I've googled it too, with no luck. She also admitted that they had had absolutely no interest from anyone looking to buy in our area. I asked if i could get in touch with someone who had had success selling through them recently and she said she couldn't give out details.
I should also add that in the 18 months we've been here we have found the housing association to be absolutely useless at every turn, for example the front door was broken for 2 months and there's a wall outside which was vandalised about 6 months ago which is just rubble. Despite numerous calls they've done nothing. So we don't exactly have a lot of hope in them getting off their backsides and trying to sell our flat for us, esp with such a small timescale. I fear it will just be an easy £300 for them, and will waste 8 weeks we desperately need in order to sell quickly.
So if we haven't sold by early September, we'll have no choice but to move but carry on paying rent, mortgage and service charge here as well as a hefty amount of rent where we're moving to. This would effectively bankrupt us. Because we only 'own' 40% we cannot rent to someone else, and apparently, neither can the housing association rent out in our absence, and in the absence of a buyer. It seems obscene that our flat would be standing empty when so many people struggle to put a roof over their heads.
It seems we're experiencing the worst of both worlds, being both leaseholders and tenants. Maybe this is just the way the world is and i just need to accept it, but if anyone knows of anything we can do to remedy the situation i would be eternally grateful. Thanks for reading.