Affordable housing

Treadmill

I had a nose around some 50/50 buy and rent affordable housing today, A three bed priced at 170K. It had bigger rooms than a similar priced house on the same development that was up for sale by the builder and came with everything, carpets, curtains, turf etc and had a bigger plot. Shame they don't let you buy 100%, could you buy it 50/50 then buy out the other half a few weeks or months later if they allow buying extra equity in steps ? that would seem like a good way to get more house for your money

poppysarah

Their rules will be fairly fixed and it doesn't mean it's affordable if you can only buy half.

Treadmill

Dunno but thats what its listed as and its been given over to a housing association.

Running_Horse

The HA will want to know your savings and income. However, when we looked into this kind of thing they were quite flexible if they had spaces to fill. In the end we preferred owning a smaller house outright to owning a fraction of a bigger place.

SquatNow

All houses will be affordable in 5 years time.

Why buy now? Wait a few years... theres no rush, no-one holding a gun to your head.

Shared ownership schemes are a rip-off anyway.

MSE has started to hear many horror stories of people who bought a shared ownership place and now the rent has gone through the roof.

Why spend £170k on 50% of a property when you'll be able to get 100% of the same/similar properties for £100k in a couple of years time?

lynzpower

I had a SO flat, and there was no question it was brilliant for what it was.

In a lovely small NB block, 2 massive bedrooms, I mean - very generous, kithcne ( bit small for me ) nice big bathroom, large lounge, garden. The hall way, wheras many NB flats are literally a few doors off the area behind the front door, led through the middle of the flat and was really wide too, everyone who saw it couldnt believe how big it was.

The guy I sold too, was a right liar bascially but he was getting a mortgage for half, then paying cash for the rest of the shares off in 12 moonths time. The mortgage can be paid off whenever of course thats nothing to do with HA

The HA can choose whether to sell you shares or not apparently, but I couldnt really see many saying no to the other 50%.

The only issue is that in my experience HAs dont like taking offers on SO, thats the price. Take it or leave it. they might be changing a bit now, Ive seen a HA offloading A SO at auction.