My Home-Moving Diary - Shared Ownership!

feeta

Right, well I thought I would do this as it may help a few people who are on here in my situation.

Basically, we purchased a 50% share in a Shared Ownership property in July 2007 (I know I know, the worst time to buy - but we ddin't know that at the time). Back then myself and my wife weren't perticularly financially savvy but we got a reasonable mortgage fixed for 2 years at 5.34%

So far, the Shared Ownership scheme has worked for us - I guess everyone has different personal situations and if it wasn't for Shared Ownership, we wouldn't have got on the housing ladder at all and would probably still be renting. I guess now will be the time to see how well Shared Ownership works when selling the property.

The way our Shared Ownership scheme works is that we have to sell for the valuation figure - carried out by an independant valuer - so for all the people that say Shared Ownership properties are over-priced, they're not...at least not down here, because as a condition of the scheme you must buy/sell for the valuation figure.

We've just recently had the valuation carried out on our property and it has lost £20k. So therefore our share has lost £10k which isn't too bad. That's the other good thing I can see about Shared Ownership - although you only receive 50% of the gain in value if the property rises, you also only loose 50%.

So I'm going to keep you updated with how everything progresses with the sale of this property and the purchase of another. We've been today to look at a few - very much over-priced in my oppinion but it gives us a view of what's available at the moment.

If anyone has any questions about our S/O scheme and how it works or would like to give any advice on the move, please feel free - I'm sure it will help someone.

Cheers guys - I'll keep you posted!

R&C

I thought I could add my experience here also, if you don't mind?

We bought a new build shared ownership 2 bed flat (40% share) in the south east in late 2004. At the time we were paying £600 per month for a studio flat and by moving it only cost us an extra £100 pm more. It felt right at the time and I was and still am very much grateful for the oppertunity to get a step on the ladder. If we didn't buy then, then I know we'd still be renting for sure.

However, my particular HA is beyond rubbish. Our service charge has gone from £20 per month to £95 per month since we bought it :eek: and although I know some of that charge is for insurance, management etc - a huge chunk of it is for gardening and cleaning, which are very rarely done. Funnily enough, we're due an estate inspection on monday so the place is looking pretty good right now! :rolleyes:

The rent increases have been pretty astronomical also. Affordable housing it may be advertised at, but once they have you in their grip they don't make it so affordable anymore. We checked our lease this year when our new rental rate for 2009 came in and noticed they were basing the rental increase on the RPI for september when it was at 5%, the highest it had been all year. Our lease states that it should be based on the RPI for december, which if I remember correctly was only a mere 0.3%. We have been chasing this for the past 4 weeks now and no one has got back to us as of yet, which is quite typical for our HA.

We are currently in the process of selling our property. We have still made a small profit of 4k (just our share, the HA get 6k) after having it independently valued (same rules as your HA) , which to be honest is more than what a lot of similar properties round here go for so I am surprised. It's not the first time we've had the flat valued and found that it has been valued slightly more than others in the area. It doesn't seem to be a problem though since it's only a share people are buying.

Selling so far has been reasonably easy apart from the fact that there are only 2 people who work in the resales team so anything you ask for is greeted with a response of 'we have 5 working days to carry this out'... and that's just for a blooming email! If things could be just that little bit quicker it'd be ok.

I don't regret our purchase at all, but I wouldn't recommend SO unless it was the absolute last resort. It's not all it seems on the surface, although I suppose some of that depends on the HA you buy with. Just don't touch A2Dominion with a barge pole!

brit1234

You may be lucky as rents on shared ownership are tired to RPI, so they should now go down.

I rented and saved rather than shared ownership. I could see it was a bad idea with all the combined costs. I have friends now who can't sell with the scheme and are stuck.

feeta

Thanks for your post R&C, very informative.

We don't have any problems like that with our H/A. Although our scheme sounds a little different from yours. I think maybe because we live in an estate of houses rather than flats - The H/A don't have any obligations for gardening/maintenance of land etc. Basically, the rent we pay to them is just for buildings insurance and obviously the fact they own 50% of the house. The rent payments aren't that bad tbh.

I think lots of areas are different - I know some housing association "estates" are like the stereotypical council estate with quite rough an delapadated houses/flats but that's not what ours is like at all. The houses around here all have really nice gardens and not one of them is in bad condition. If it wasn't for the fact we're not allowed to staircase up to 100% of the property, we would stay here as it's a really wonderful place to live.

Anyway, good luck with your sale, I hope it all goes well - keep us informed on your progress.

feeta

Ok, so we instructed Hips4u to produce our home information pack. This cost us £210 so not too bad. I know there are some people who say the internet firms aren't always that great but I've read a few good reviews about Hips4u so I decided to give them a try.

We instructed them on Friday and yesterday (Saturday) one of their subcontractors rang to arrange the Energy Assessment. Unfortunately we've already made bookings to view properties on Monday and Tuesday evenings so the guy isn't coming till Wednesday - I dont know whether that will hold things up or not.

On the sale side of things, I've read that according to the land registry, properties have dropped to 2004 prices. Is this the experiences of others? There have been hardly any sales around this area so nothing to make a comparison to.

feeta

Right, now this is where we are...

I'ts been a long time with no activity really. Been ringing the housing association a few times each week trying to push them to find someone etc. No one was found.

After the 6 weeks that they have to find a buyer from either their own lists and website or from the homeseekers register from the council, they hadn't found anyone so we decided we would start advertising the property ourselves via posters on the local village notice boards and in the parish magazine etc (as the houses are only available to local people).

Surprise surprise, within 3 days of the magazine being published we had 5 people interested. I passed them all on to the housing association so they could get more details and book a viewing if they wanted to.

Of those 5, two of them wanted to book viewings so we made appointments for 11am and 12noon last Saturday. On the Saturday morning, one of the ladies rang up and said she had now found somewhere else so wasnt going to be viewing any more.

The other lady turned up as she said she would and was very interested indeed. She pretty much tried to push us out so she could move in! She told us that she was currently renting with the housing association and had been for quite some time and is also on the homeseekers register and the housing associations list. However, she hadn't been contacted by anyone to tell her the house was available.

The next day I rang the housing association who told me that the lady was very interested and was in a good position to proceed. They just needed to carry out the financial checks on her to make sure she qualifies etc. They also told me that because we found the woman, we would not need to pay them their 1% comission for selling the property so I was quite pleased about that. What she did tell me though is that because it has now been more than 3 months since we had the house valued. The valuation is now out of date and we need a new valuation and would have to pay for that before the woman completes (if she wants to)

Now, I have 2 problems here. Firstly, we shouldn't have to pay for another valuation because if the housing association/council had done their job and contacted the woman when we first put the house on the market, she would have been interested then and proceeded well before the 3 months was up. And secondly, if we have the house valued and it has devalued even more, we will be loosing out on this money.

What do people think I should do about that? I've rang the association and they said that they don't contact people, they just advertise the properties on a website (this woman who's interested doesnt have internet and couldnt check the website so she had asked them to contact her) and send the details to the council who should contact anybody on their homeseekers register. So they said it wasnt their fault and the valuation still needs to be paid. I said I would contact the council and the girl on the phone said I was welcome to but wouldnt get anywhere with them. So I did ring the council yesterday and the lady said she would look into it and contact me on Monday/Tuesday.

I just think its terrible. Down here in Cornwall people are always going on about the lack of affordable housing and we put our house on the market and they don't even seem to push the sale.

Anyway, rant over. I'd appreciate any advice.

Cheers

bingibongi

Shared ownership sux - I thought everyone knew that.

supermonkey

Did anything ever happen with this?

Found the thread by googling and was hoping for a positive outcome!