My Shared Ownership story (success story...)

Entertainer

The other advantage that you haven't mentioned is that you get to own your own home and therefore have full security of tenure which you don't in rented. I feel that shared ownership can be a good thing for this reason, provided you don't overpay for your property.

gabyjane

Hi Sturgeon i have to agree with you on your post..not many will i bet but hey!

We bought a S/O property almost 3 years ago and i think we made a very good move.

We have a 2 bed house, parking, drive, big garage, off road parking, 15 min walk to a beach..very good sized rooms, downstairs toilet etc..i could go on but just so some people know not all of these propertys are like shoe boxes!

We only bought 40% as it came up rather out of the blue tbh although looking for years!, we had loans to pay but were very lucky to get one as they are like gold dust in our town! We moved in and have done a few bits to the house and are now saving to pay chunks off it as i have a new job starting and it enables us to save quite a good amount.

The rent is cheap and combined with the mortgage it is less than any rented house would be and it is ours! The rent does go up each year and has gone up about £3 in the last 2 years so not bad. Mortage is due in August so waiting to see what happens then. One identical up the rd has just sold for £179,950 and we bought ours for £153k so will see where that leaves us..till then we are not guessing!

Glad to hear a good story r.e S/O as they usually get dissed for one reason or another! Enjoy your house x

sturgeon

The flat was £150k not £160k in the end as I got it down further. Plus with new job the leftover amount after all bills is closer to £800 not the £500 or so quoted below.

By the way the idea I will be 72 when I pay this off is ridiculous. It's a 25 year term and I can overpay the mortgage. I just need to decide whether my saving should be used for overpayments or to staircase. I am to buy back 10% around every 2-2.5 years if I choose that option, by not spending all my disposable income.

Imp

Good luck with the homes, but don't stay on these schemes too long. They are the modern incarnation of the shared appreciation mortgages, which seemed like a good deal at the time, and were if they were a short term thing, but left people trapped in their homes when they needed to move 25 years later.

Out,_Vile_Jelly

London is saturated with ugly blocks of newbuild flats, and 1 beds are the hardest to shift. Glad to hear you're content for the moment, but the time may come when you need to move and find that you're competing with millions of other identikit apartments that their owners are desperate to get rid of. With the average age of a FTB increasing all the time, there is an ever diminishing market for this type of property. 1 beds have to be a bit special in London I think, for example the one I rent has a substantial private garden and original Victorian features.

gabyjane

Pmsl, some replies are so bitter and jealous on here..i wonder if this was the same story with new builds years ago and mortgages etc..apparantly for the last few years we never should have bought..anything nevermind S/O..i can imagine if we had listened we would be in the same renting position now! Thank god i ignore certain things!

poppysarah

gabyjane wrote: »

Pmsl, some replies are so bitter and jealous on here!

Not bitter and not jealous here.
I have my own house. A whole one.
Shared ownership is a con imo.

You would never tell a child "Just think when you're grown up you can own 25% of your own home"

gabyjane

poppysarah wrote: »

Not bitter and not jealous here.
I have my own house. A whole one.
Shared ownership is a con imo.

You would never tell a child "Just think when you're grown up you can own 25% of your own home"

Well you are one of the lucky ones then arent you, maybe you dont live in a town that is full of second home owners or holiday homes leaving none for residents?!! Oh and when we have bought all our house we will have a 'whole house' too!

mumcoll

Our first 'bought' house was shared ownership. We bought it for £22,000, had a mortgage for £11,000 and paid rent on the other 50%. Our income was about £6k pa.

Within 6 months we had sold the house for £25,000 which gave us £1,500 to put as a deposit on a £27,500 house (100%). Interest rates then went up to 16%!

We paid our mortgage off in January this year. So I would say our shared ownership start was definitely good for us. Although we were only in it briefly, it gave us the foot on the ladder that we wouldn't otherwise have had.

As you can see by the figures, this was a long time ago - 1983.

gabyjane

Hi mumcoll your story is exactly why we decided to go for this house and ignore the possible risks..all houses have risks and the biggest one for us was buying a 'proper' house and struggling..with this house i know that if me or dh lost one of our jobs we would still be ok paying the mortgage at the end of the month..that to me is a big thing tbh.

We know a few people with S/O houses or ones that have had and done ok out of them, the option of us having some equity in the future is another thing we may do and move BUT i LOVE this house and S/O or not it would be one ide seriously look at anyway to buy as it has everything we need.