Shared ownership scams

Graham_Devon

Chris2685 wrote: »

OK, the lady on the phone said the service charge was extra. If that (using your figure, which could well not be the same of course) was included in the rent on the other 75%, it would bring the rent right down to £8 a week rent, which would be pretty insane I think.

£17 per month, not per week

Degenerate

Graham_Devon wrote: »

No, you can't.

Of course you can. You're free to make an offer of whatever you want for the equity share. If the vendor says "That's the price, take it or leave it.", that's their prerogative.

Graham_Devon

Degenerate wrote: »

Of course you can. You're free to make an offer of whatever you want for the equity share. If the vendor says "That's the price, take it or leave it.", that's their prerogative.

About as useful as ringing up your council and trying to bargain 20% off your council tax.

Degenerate

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Biggest thing to bear in mind is that probably, half of you on your site will be paying, whereas the other half will be sitting there, greeting you home from work swigging fosters and having a barbecue, while their kids think it's amusing to kick footballs at your car. You will be paying to keep these people....i..e they pay no service charge, but get all the benefits of the gardening for communal areas, drainage, lighting etc. They also crate a larger service charge by destroying fencing etc, which your service charge then has to cough up to replace.

You make it sound like the working residents have to subside the unemployed on a street-by-street basis, this is nonsense.

We're ALL paying to keep these people. I am paying to keep your unemployed neighbours as much as you are. In fact, going from previous conversations about what you think is an average income, I'm probably paying considerably more than you. Your service charge is worked out based on a formula that distributes the costs over all the properties, including the ones occupied by benefit claimants. The benefit claimant's bills are then paid by benefits, funded by central government from general taxation.

Degenerate

Graham_Devon wrote: »

About as useful as ringing up your council and trying to bargain 20% off your council tax.

More nonsense. Council tax payers don't have a choice whether to buy their local services. Councils will never face a situation where their local services aren't selling and they have to drop the price.

You can make an offer for shared equity property, if they don't accept it, then like any other vendor it's because they think they can get more.

GDB2222

As I understand it, you pay the whole service charge, ie on both the bit you own and the bit you don't. Your rent (on the unowned bit) is determined at the outset and then escalates at a rate determined by the HCA, based on RPI + 0.5%. Or maybe it's one of the other Quangos. The lease is likely to be the HCA model lease, which is over 100 pages long. Such joy! I gather that they don't negotiate on anything, but no harm in trying.

Overall, SO does what it set out to do, namely allow the less well off to have some semblance of home ownership. Pricewise, I'm sure they are almost all astoundingly poor value.

For example, there's this 2 bed shared ownership at £310k http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/new-homes/property-26757475.html

Or there's this one for £150k http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-25891516.html (Okay it's for over-55's only, but you can negotiate on the price, whereas you can't for the SO.)

Or this one for £130k in a slightly nicer area http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-27241603.html (That's billed as a one bedroom, but it's got a separate dining room.)

HCA = http://www.homesandcommunities.co.uk/

GDB2222

Degenerate wrote: »

You can make an offer for shared equity property, if they don't accept it, then like any other vendor it's because they think they can get more.

But they are so po-faced about it. 'We charge what our professional valuers value it at, and we don't negotiate.' That's what I was told. If they are like that when they try to sell you something, they must be truly awful once you move in.

Graham_Devon

Degenerate wrote: »

You make it sound like the working residents have to subside the unemployed on a street-by-street basis, this is nonsense.

We're ALL paying to keep these people.

Do you pay our service charge too then?

Very kind of you.

Re-read my post before ranting. I was talking about the bits the service charge pays for...those housed by the council do not pay a service charge, but get all the ammenties the service charge pays for (gardening of communal areas, lighting, drainage, fencing etc).

wageslave

When I first escaped from the nasty marriage and was paying 90% of my wages for a dive, I seriously considered shared ownership.

OK, it was tiny, in a less than salubrious area and far too expensive but I could raise (my second, I already had a mortgage on a house I couldn't live in) a mortgage on it. You have no idea how tempted I was. It was clean and I longed for clean.

In the end, no matter how desperate I was, I couldn't justify the figures to myself. If I had had to spend another year in the fat landlords house, I would have grabbed it.

Are they overpriced? Yes.

Are they difficult to resell? Depends on the area, some are, some aren't. But on the whole, yes.

Is buying one a bad idea? Depends what your options are.

I wouldn't rule them out

Degenerate

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Re-read my post before ranting. I was talking about the bits the service charge pays for...those housed by the council do not pay a service charge, but get all the ammenties the service charge pays for (gardening of communal areas, lighting, drainage, fencing etc).

I read your post fine the first time, thank you, and you're talking out of your a**e.

They do pay a service charge. Depending on what services are included, it will be paid for by their housing benefit, with possibly some proportion expected to be met from their income benefits (If your service charge includes services beyond the scope of housing benefit.) Ie the taxpayer pays, and I'm pretty sure I pay more tax than you.

If your neighbours really aren't being charged a service charge, you need to get yourself a lawyer, because you're being ripped-off.