unable to sell shared ownership house

stationroadh

to cut a long story short we bought a shared ownership 2 bed house 5 years ago,our family has now grown to 5 of us and the house has become way to small,and we have had to live elsewhere,we have had a few ups and downs including our business closed down a couple of years ago which left us with a poor credit rating ,we have had it up for sale for over a year with no joy and the house remains empty,we cant move back in as we have our children in schools in a different area and the house is just tiny for 2 adults and 3 children,we are at a loss on what to do as we are still paying the mortgage/rent for the property,the housing association just refuse to help us in any way and our finances and being stretched beyond our means,can anyone help with some advice !

maginot

If the house has been on the Market for over a year you need to reduce the selling price to a more realistic level.
What help would you be expecting from the housing association? Sell your house, pay your mortgage for you?

stationroadh

the shared ownership of 25% is on for £21,850 so not overpriced and we are not allowed to reduce or overprice the house ,we asked if we could staircase down so they could reduce our share but they also refuse,we asked if we could rent the house out but no luck there either ?

Paul_the_Painter

Rent it out.

Housing associations will let you rent it out if you can't sell. This should actually leave you in the position to make a profit on it, Some Associations won't let you make a profit if you rent it out but a bit of creative accounting will let you seem to make no profit.

Say rent to HA is £200
Mortgage payment is £300

Rent obtainable is £650

In theory you make £150/month

But you drive 100 miles/month checking on property - thats allowable at 40p/mile so a £40 cost.

down to £110 "profit"

services on boiler etc. £20/month

down to £90

change the worst carpet £480 - equates to £40/month

down to £50

insurance should soak up the rest

of course the fundamental reason why any house will not sell is price. If you gave it away you would have people beating a path to your door - no one wants it at the price you are marketing at. somewhere in between is the price it will sell for.

The amount you have borrowed against it is immaterial, the price someone will pay is not.

The other option is to "staircase" it

Get a price from the HA for a purchase of their interest in the house, you can then have the EA market the property as a non-shared ownership house. You don't need to part with any cash, as the purchase of the HAs share and your sale, and the purchase by the new owner all happens at the same time.

eg you own 50% and owe £60,000, HA wants £60,000 for their 50%, market as freehold at £135,000. Someone offers £125,000. You buy the HAs 50% and sell the now 100% to the new owner all on the same day and walk away with £5000. It can be done, but depends on the lease, some have maximum 90% available to the "owner"

stationroadh

we are not allowed to rent it out or so they tell us,we have poor credit so cant get another mortgage etc

G51shopaholic

What reason have the HA given for not buying back the 25% - I always thought it was part of the deal that you had to offer it back to them 1st

Paul_the_Painter

To be honest we also need to know your Housing Association, and the area you are selling in. Web anononymity is all very well, but doesn't really help in a situation like this.

Preferably need the link to the ad for house too.

££sc££

The only advice I can think of is to persuade your HA to allow you to sublet. We reassessed after a formal complaint and I introduced a policy at the HA I work for, to allow shared owners to sublet in exceptional circs (they've got to have a good reason for wanting to move out of their shared ownership home). Took us a few months to get legal advice etc, but has relieved situation for some shared owners. A lot of HAs are introducing policies like this now. We introduced ours about Xmas time and there were plenty of others who had already done so in SE England. Although the lease may specifically prevent subletting, the HA can give you a licence to do so. This will cost them a lot less than if you give up and abandon.

££sc££

In my opinion you've got more chance of persuading HA to let you sublet than buying back the remaining share. We are getting daily requests for buybacks and not many HAs will have funds for this. They'd also prefer to use the money they do have to build more homes

stationroadh

I am unsure why they wont let us sublet they just said it goes against the policy,we have told them we are experiencing hardship as we are living elsewhere just so we can get on withour lives and they still unwilling to help,we are struggling to get by due to buisness debt we already have a dmp

££sc££

Are you in England?