Housing Association

captainhaggis

Hi all,

Wonder if anyone might be able to answer this one for me.

I bought a flat about two years ago in a luxury development in the centre of my home town. The flats here were in high demand. I paid about 202k for a two bed, two bath property and the flat comes with a dedicated parking space, secured gate entry system (which two years on STILL doesn't work), a concierge service and a residents' gym.

Now, I've just discovered that one of the blocks in the development - a block of, I believe, 18 properties - was given to a local housing association for sale/lease/part ownership to their registered users.

It seems wrong that :

a) people are getting these luxury flats for far less than private buyers have paid, but more importantly
b) that the developer didn't advise me as a private buyer that a housing association would be taking one of the blocks

Does anyone think I can argue with the developer over this point?

Cheers

Aygo

That is exactly the situation that has happened where I live. Sorry that I cant give you any advice, only that the builders who built my home ( i rent) also built at the same time houses for sale behind me. There was only supposed to be a very small minority of rentals bought by the local housing association. Recently the last phase began after about 8 months doing nothing due to credit crunch etc, the building restarted and we heard the LA were buying the new houses to rent , needless to say and they were quite right the residents who bought their houses were now in the minority and wanted the LA to buy the houses from them, I have still not heard the outcome of this but I will check and post back.

tomstickland

There's a large development in Gloucester called "Kingsway".
It's actually part of the pre-existing sprawl of Quedgeley, but the developers wanted this to be a bold, exciting "contemporary" urban village. In reality it was a typical late 2000s new build area - tiny houses packed in as tightly as possible to meet the regulations. Initially something like 20% was going to be social housing. As the recession took hold the developers sold off more and more houses to the Housing Associatons. They recently admitted that there was no upper limit on the proportion of social housing.

The story I heard was that some West Midlands housing associations were shipping their problem families as far away as possible....to Gloucester.

The area has a bad reputation now. I don't know whether this is justified or not. Estate agents market the houses as being in Quedgeley.


Oh, there's no direct road link to the main shopping centre of Quedgeley, no shops or facilities in Kingsway. It's just a sprawl of housing. Maybe this is what they meant by contemporary (meaningless word anyway).

Rightly or wrongly, private buyers hate affordable housing. They reason that even if 90% of housing association properties are occupied by decent people they don't want to take a chance on living next door to the 10% who aren't.

tomstickland

http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/news/social-housing-Kingsway-planned/article-1179288-detail/article.html

Earlier this month residents reacted angrily to plans to increase the proportion of social housing on the estate.
Gloucester City Council's planning committee ruled 42% of new properties built on part of the Quedgeley site would be reserved for council homes.

http://www.kingsway-villagers.co.uk/news/the-citizen-on-kingsway/

In a very short time, Kingsway went from a nearly all privately owned community, to roughly 50:50 private: social housing community. Obviously there are good and bad in all communities, both private and public, but the lack of co-ordination between the housing associations is questionable. They are duty bound to control their properties and, in a very small number of specific locations, failed to do so. They found weasel words to try to wriggle out from scrutiny.
The overall situation will self correct as more privately owned / occupied houses are completed, and as more shared ownerships are occupied. Also, it now looks like some of the transfers of whole cul-de-sacs to social housing are actually going to be used by families moving to Gloucestershire to work at the new NATO base. That will significantly affect the character of Kingsway.
The Citizen has been a cut and paste publication for a long time now. It simply regurgitates press releases put out by the councils and the like, merely top and tailing text put out by somebody else.
Where there is, infrequent, original content, it often misses the real story, the thing of most importance, in favour of a short piece of work that can be summed up with a sensationalist headline. The trouble with disparaging terms used for emotive effect by lazy journalists is that they sit in the public conscientiousness for a long time. Fairly or unfairly. There is no effective right of correction when the paper gets its story woefully wrong.
The Kingsway Village teething problems were brought about by an imbalance in the community mix. The developers took a quick fix short term solution to a cash flow problem, at about the same time as GHA got most of its tenants moved in. The City Council was complicit in the breaking of the planning brief for the area, and had to find weasel words to justify its position.
The City Councillors just don’t give a toss; they are sitting on very safe seats, and can afford to ignore the electorate. You just cannot trust that the City will do what it says. You watch, come next spring putting right problems will be top of the agenda, come next July it will be bottom. The Parish Council has tried to influence the situation, but realistically is too small, lacking in power, and under resourced to achieve anything without the support of the City and County Councils.
All I can suggest is, if you want things to change, keep up the pressure by lobbying the developers, and if you can’t find the jewel go to the crown. Lobby the housing associations. Lobby the Councillors; you might be able to get something done if they think they are going to lose their seat. And only ever say positive things to the papers.

bristol_pilot

This will not help at all...but I remember posting on this forum a couple of years ago my prediction that this would happen to new-build 'luxury apartments'.

blckbrd

It's not unusual for councils to insist on the inclusion of a proportion of 'affordable housing' in new developments - otherwise no planning consent.

I_luv_cats

You see Council Housing (often run down) one side of the street and private dwellings on the other side. Some have gated entrances and barbed wire etc.

It seems a good idea to build places where people merge and no finger could be pointed!!

Do you think you are a bit of a snob!!!

Also there was a BBC prog where a high-rise council block of flats was sold for a £1 to developers, the residents moved on and then once done up the flats were sold on for up to near million quid mark!!!

captainhaggis

I_luv_cats wrote: »

You see Council Housing (often run down) one side of the street and private dwellings on the other side. Some have gated entrances and barbed wire etc.

It seems a good idea to build places where people merge and no finger could be pointed!!

Do you think you are a bit of a snob!!!

Also there was a BBC prog where a high-rise council block of flats was sold for a £1 to developers, the residents moved on and then once done up the flats were sold on for up to near million quid mark!!!

A good post.

Am I being a snob? Perhaps a little. But at +200k I think I have every right. There are plenty - plenty - of new developments being built in my town that are at a lower level of the market than these properties.

My problem isn't with housing associations taking flats in new developments but I do think the developments in which new flats are built should be chosen more carefully.

I've worked, saved and invested VERY hard to be able to afford that flat. It really in an executive place with all those facilities.

This is like the countless discussions we've had recently about saving for retirement etc : by giving people the perks that prudence affords one without actually having been prudent oneself, you remove the incentive to save/invest.

If people want a house they should be helped in getting one. But should they be given a property at the high end of the market?

Remember that the cost of these flats will have been built in to the cost of mine....

:eek:

captainhaggis

blckbrd wrote: »

It's not unusual for councils to insist on the inclusion of a proportion of 'affordable housing' in new developments - otherwise no planning consent.

Fair enough. Good idea on the part of the council. But I think the developer should tell those buying a property in the development if this is the case.

I'm not sure I'd have bought one, to be honest, had I know about the HA block. Purely out of principle.

leveller2911

blckbrd wrote: »

It's not unusual for councils to insist on the inclusion of a proportion of 'affordable housing' in new developments - otherwise no planning consent.

Its actually Government policy.The ratio is something like 2.8/10 affordable housing and quite righly so in my opinion.There are far too many overpriced homes that the vast majority of people under the average wage can't afford. Given the fact that the Tories allowed the selling off of the Council house stock and not allowing the Councils to build with the prceeds has made the problem far worse now.

It was around 4-5 yrs ago in London the 1st £1m ex-council house was sold, many many people have bought over the years and relied on HPI to "climb the greasy ladder".Many of those now live in houses worth vastly more than they bought thier Council houses for and suddenly forget how they started.

We need affordable housing and if you want someone to blame for having Chav,work shy scumbags living locally don't blame the Councils blame the Tories for giving un-married mums Council houses during the 80,s and Labour for continuing the policy.:rolleyes:

Labours grand plan for integration........

lynzpower

If people want a house they should be helped in getting one. But should they be given a property at the high end of the market?

Im sorry to have to tell you this, but the value of the flat is not what you paid for it, Its what you'd sell it for. It is not the "high end " of the market if HAs & LAs are buying them it is because they are surplus to the normal market ( ie oversupplied) If you paid 200, but a HA will only stump up 160 ( pure guess, Ive honestly no idea what they paid) , its that you have overpaid Im sure this is not comforting to you, and I'm so sorry if this comes across as harsh.

On the plus side many many people who need socail housing right now are people who quite simply had good jobs but have been made redundant. They are no different to you or me- so why should they be "out of your sight"