Buying shared ownership

[Iceball]

Hello, we've just accepted an offer after just six days on the market and now I'm in a stressful whirlwind waiting for Monday to see if there are any shared ownership houses left locally.

We've lived here over 30 years and now selling due to divorce, so extremely stressful all round really.

Any advice around shared ownership or moving in general please?

Don't buy an older, resale, property, as the terms are far worse than the current shared ownership model.

We've just bought SO, and it's great for us, as we've got the size house that we really need, which needs nothing doing to it (other than wants, rather than needs).

We'll staircase eventually and the freehold will be transferred to us.

You should be able to see on Rightmove if there are any properties, or the HA's website. IME they remove listings pronto once the homes have gone.

For buying it, we had to pass their financial assessment by putting all our earnings / outgoings into their online application form. Once that was passed, we had to talk to their mortgage broker to add some finesse to that assessment and confirm the % we could afford to buy (our % which was comfortable was 10% less than the initial assessment). We chose to use the same broker for getting the mortgage, but it was not compulsory.

We'd already chosen our plot, but it was only allocated to us once signed off by the broker, which is when we paid our reservation fee (deducted from the amount paid at the end).

@NoWordForFluffy
Thanks for your reply. That sounds really positive for you.
My intention is to buy the % outright (a lot of house equity) and will just need to pay the rent part, although I understand I'll still need a financial assessment.
If you don't mind me asking, Who did you buy with?

You may find they want you to exchange within 4 weeks of their solicitor sending the document pack / draft contract to yours, so be prepared for that. Our HA wasn't too concerned about that (thankfully, but it was their solicitor which held stuff up anyway, not ours).

We bought with Torus.

Have you done an online application to be considered yet?

Is there an update on this thread please? What did you do in the end?