Sorry for this incredibly dull thread - just wondering if anyone has bought a property using Shared Ownership and would they recommend it? Have seen some mixed reviews and heard some horror stories!
I’m also looking for some tips on this! My manager recommended doing this. She just sold her 25% share and bought a flat, albeit with her partner but she said the share considerably went up in value. I would never want to live in outer London just for the sake of owning a property. The share to buy seems ideal as I’ll be able to buy something fairly central, though I’m not sure just how much selection there is.
I did this 9 years ago. Just about to take it to 100%. I've had no real problems and property has nearly doubled price. This does mean that you end up paying a lot more for the final percentage than you did for the first but all in all it's been great.
Does anyone have a link to a good explanation on this for me, a basic, or are able to provide one themselves? I’ve got a help to buy and I’ve seen this on a lot of city flats/apartments but sadly I don’t fully understand how it works or what could go wrong etc.
Some of them don’t let you buy up to 100%, and most are leasehold properties which means paying extra because you don’t own the land the house is built on.
An obvious potential problem is that you pay the current market rate for whatever % you buy. Since house prices, in the UK, have historically gone up much faster that wages, it can be hard for people to buy the remaining percentage. I know someone who is essentially stuck owning 25% of her flat forever more. I think it can be difficult to sell it on, because obviously it's a smaller potential market, though I think sometimes the Housing Association involved might be obliged to buy it back. Anyway. I'm not sure the popjustice forum is the place to start - I'd look at moneysavingexpert as a starting point.
I'm nearing completion on mine. It's been a long slog. Will be basically 6 months from viewing to completion but so worth it.
Try here: https://www.sharetobuy.com/ I bought my flat using the shared ownership scheme. We're the only people to have lived in our flat and we were renting from our housing association. Basically, it was a simple sale. It took 8 months from initial enquiry to the sale. Why it was such a long slog I have no idea but be prepared! It worked out pretty well for us in the end though. Just after we bought we found out that our building had Grenfell-style cladding that the tenants were expected to pay for the replacement of, but because our housing association still owned 50% of our flat they could support us, especially in paying for the cost of the waking watch morons staff. One thing to watch out for though. I'm assuming it's the same for everyone but you start the scheme off through a website in which you pay agents an upfront fee when you pick the mortgage you want. We picked ours but then we found out they'd made a mistake and we weren't eligible for that particular one, but because we'd paid the fee we felt that we had no choice but to choose another one. Actually, every single party apart from our solicitors made a mistake along the way. At one point we received a document with the wrong address on!
Weirdly the day after I posted my entry I got an email saying that the website would no longer be offering a mortgage broker service.
Anyone from the UK used shared ownership? I’ve been looking at just getting a straightforward mortgage but noticed that shared ownership affords more, which would be better for me in London. Anyone got any recent experience of it? I’ve heard mixed things.
Can we talk about general housing stuff here? I'm currently a bit torn about whether to try and buy in London or the suburbs (where I'm from). COVID-19 has made me reconsider what I want a bit and I do think some outdoor space would make a big difference for my mental health if/when lockdown goes back into full force. I also think the last few months have proved that things can be a lot more flexible in terms of where you work from, so I should be able to work from home a few days a week. On the flip side, I love London and find it an amazing place to be. The sheer variety of places to go and things to try feels almost endless and I'd definitely miss out on that if I didn't live there. Basically girls I'm...
I'd be wary of shared ownership at the moment. Especially if the property market starts to drop with mass Covid redundancies. I sold my (non-shared ownership) flat in March, then everything stopped for the virus. Things are back on track now, and the conveyancing is going on. However, I've decided not to go straight into an onward purchase. I'm getting a lot of 'price reduced' emails from Zoopla etc. There may be lots of interest, and lots of things on the market, but very little seems to be selling. I've decided to sell, get the money and cash in, then rent for a bit in my new area to see how things go. If I see something I like, I can move fast. As for London/not London, I decided to make the move out last year. But I'm 41, and I feel like I've done it. I'll only be an hour away by train, so can commute in if needed, but as a freelancer in the digital/mobile industry, I can see a big transition to more home working coming. Basically, it all depends on what you feel is important to you at this stage of your life. For me, getting a freehold house with my own stairs in a quiet area is what I'm after. But 10 years ago, this idea would have horrified me.
Also, I’d expect a lot more people to abandon London if remote (or even remote 2 days per week) becomes the norm.
I've done it. Been great for me (See above) although latest mortgage has been a nightmare due to unforeseen circumstances. Feel free to DM me if you have any specific questions.
Thank you, I will at some point- be useful to get perspective from someone who’s gone/ going through it.
Same, and my experience is pretty much above your post. It worked for us although I'm not in London, I don't know if things differ down there.
Yes can a mod retitle this to a general housing thread, maybe? I think there's going to be a huge exodus to places within an hour or two of London as more people get offered the option to work from home, but businesses will still want some form of meeting space in town. I think this'll probably happen in earnest later this year or next year as more and more businesses see the benefits of it (including saving huge amounts of money on offices and just keeping some form of flexible space instead). So that means that the 'suburb' area you're considering could end up being quite desirable depending on its location, which means prices might rise sharper than you'd expect. The entire fabric of cities, working and housing are going to change considerably so it's very difficult to predict what's going to happen, but if you're torn between both you should definitely be keeping an eye on trends in both places over the next 6-12-18 months.
@Kyle. Honestly there is a lot to consider. The biggest one at the moment is that the immediate aftermath of Covid is likely to be a recession/depression which will drive house prices down, making it a great time to buy but you’ll have to be prepared to possibly stay wherever you are for a long time to allow house prices to recover. Where would you feel more comfortable doing that? What are your longer term plans re: starting a family, career etc and which area fits those plans best? It’s harder to gauge where house prices may recover faster this time around, as like @bestinase says, the entire way in which companies work will change going forward which could drive demand for homes in London down, and homes in the suburbs up allowing them to recover quicker. Other things to consider is that it will likely get harder to get a mortgage the longer the economic downturn continues as banks will be less willing to lend unless you have a larger deposit. Certainly I’ve already got friends whose mortgage in principle have lapsed during lockdown and when they’ve come again to get one now sales have resumed, they’re being offered less money. That doesn’t mean rush into anything, just something to be aware of. We got our mortgage with a 10% deposit just before the start of lockdown. Whilst we expect our house will go down in value from what we’ve paid quite dramatically in the near future, we wouldn’t have been able to buy this house at all during the inevitable down turn because the bank would have required a much larger deposit. We know we’ll be here longer than our initial 5 year plan now to allow prices to recover, but we may not have been able to get our perfect home at all had we waited to buy during the downturn. Swings and roundabouts really! Of course the economy may bounce back strongly and all this may not be something you have to worry about as much, but it doesn’t seem likely!
Thanks so much for the advice @jordxn and @bestinase. There's loads to consider at the moment but fingers crossed it all works out, the way I'm think at the moment is more suburbs since it suits me longer term better. I can always crash at a friends or get a hotel when I want to go really hard in London on a night out!
I was talking to a friend about this recently and, although the concept seems a bit weird right now, the idea of 'flexible living' might be more and more common in London. There's already quite a big market for Mon-Fri rooms because people commute in from further afield and need somewhere to stay on weeknights, but once people only need to start coming in a few days every two weeks (for example), it might make sense to go into a rental collective where you have some sort of roter of who can stay when and then share out the cost.
