Unmortgage

csgohan4

Scam written all over it

chappers

I don't think so it's just shared equity under another guise, downscaled to include individuals. As it's commercial it will be more expensive than government shared ownership schemes.
The only issue I see is that due to the large salary multipliers, stepping up might be a serious problem for a lot of people.

davidmcn

chappers wrote: »

I don't think so it's just shared equity under another guise, downscaled to include individuals. As it's commercial it will be more expensive than government shared ownership schemes.
The only issue I see is that due to the large salary multipliers, stepping up might be a serious problem for a lot of people.

If it were that straightforward, they'd explain it properly on their website. Or at least get their fake MSE members shilling it here to explain it properly.

eddddy

csgohan4 wrote: »

Scam written all over it

chappers wrote: »

I don't think so it's just shared equity under another guise, downscaled to include individuals. As it's commercial it will be more expensive than government shared ownership schemes.

I don't think it's a scam - and the concept is fine in theory.

I guess my concerns would be that it's a new unregulated fledgling business and the people running it might be 'lightweight' or 'dreamers' - and/or lack the skills to run a business like this.

Their business model seems to be that they try to find 2 groups of people:

1. Investors - who are happy to start by owning, say, 95% of a property, and receive 95% of the market rent.

2. 'Occupiers' - who are happy to start by owning, say, 5% of a property, and pay 95% of the market rent.

Plus the 'Occupiers' overpay rent each month, to increase their ownership percentage, and therefore reduce their rent percentage

.

Obviously, 'the devil is in the detail'....

• Has unmortgage really got a waiting list of investors on standby?
• Who decides what the market rent is on an ongoing basis?
• Who decides what the market value is on an ongoing basis?
• What happens if unmortgage go bust?
• What happens if an investor goes bust?
• What happens if an occupier cannot pay their rent?
• Who decides when the property needs maintenance (e.g. repainting)?
• Who pays for maintenance, insurance etc?

etc etc

I would want to go over their contracts with a very fine-toothed comb - and probably want a specialist solicitor to look at it as well.

FWIW - here are some links:
http://moneyweek.com/unmortgage-better-than-a-mortgage/
https://angel.co/unmortgage

P_D

I have just had some dealings with Unmortgage as they are hiring staff for their start-up. And what happened says a lot about them. NONE of it is good.

Actually they were looking for a copywriter. They only decided AFTER applications were made, all of which take time, to insist that applicants undertook a copy-test (I did explain - because I've written for blue-chips and governments around the world - that it's like asking my surgeon to undertake a free operation, or my solicitor to prepare some free documents, to prove they are any good). Then they didn't call as arranged to discuss this.

Indeed I only did as I was asked after one of their directors tardily contacted me, when I complained at the copy-test and the failure to call, and asked me to spend hours doing it. He insisted that I'd be treated properly because of his personal involvement. So, under the misapprehension that he had any integrity, I then spent hours generating a solution that they will not be able to match. But I stuck my copyright on it because I wouldn't trust these guys. And picking applicants' brains like this is a scam as old as the hills.

This morning they said they were not interested. Let's put that in context. See below the central proposition currently written in a huge font on their homepage.

'For people who can afford to rent, but want to own, enjoy the benefits of home ownership with as little as a 5% deposit.'

It is grammatically inept. (Remove all the copy between the commas and the rest doesn't make sense. So an attempt at a parenthesis has been botched.) Yet the same director who asked me to do the copy-test either wrote this himself or okayed it. And that is their headline.

So this same guy, who obviously has literacy issues himself as well as organisational issues, thinks that my work is not good enough to merit me even being shortlisted. And clearly he has not managed to employ a single member of staff whose English is good enough to spot that the central proposition is written in unintelligible language. Or, at least, he's not employed anybody literate who is interested enough in the business to read their own website and had the balls to tell the directors that the central proposition is in gibberish.

It would be funny if it were not so totally dishonest.

Don't trust these guys. They are prats and I would not want to be in a home on which they had ANY lien. You wouldn't want that either. Give them a wide berth.

SavingAway88

I'm really interested in this, it sounds like it's well balanced and thought out, and they just got a lot of funding. The company is centered around fairness, and the fact that the valuations happen every month, as well as the opportunity to pay more off every month seems smart.

Existing shared ownerships have huge downsides, whether they're local authorities or not. The cost of paying for valuations every time you want to staircase up, the limitations put on the part owner in terms of what they can do with the property, and the difficulty selling if you've staircased too much, considering the property has to be sold on to someone else who can access the scheme means it's incredibly difficult. Along with that, the risk of negative equity and the cost of rent alongside a mortgage?

Anything that tries to improve on that system is worth listening to. They're just starting up, I'm eager to see what Unmortgage have to say once they're properly up and running.

AdrianC

SavingAway88 wrote: »

I'm really interested in this, it sounds like it's well balanced and thought out, and they just got a lot of funding. The company is centered around fairness, and the fact that the valuations happen every month, as well as the opportunity to pay more off every month seems smart.

Existing shared ownerships have huge downsides, whether they're local authorities or not. The cost of paying for valuations every time you want to staircase up, the limitations put on the part owner in terms of what they can do with the property, and the difficulty selling if you've staircased too much, considering the property has to be sold on to someone else who can access the scheme means it's incredibly difficult. Along with that, the risk of negative equity and the cost of rent alongside a mortgage?

Anything that tries to improve on that system is worth listening to. They're just starting up, I'm eager to see what Unmortgage have to say once they're properly up and running.

They're hardly "just starting up". They've just got another £10m in finance, yes - not that that's going to go very far at all - but they've been around since 2016. Their "launch" next year is more of a relaunch.


Gawd knows what kind of relationship a monthly desktop valuation is going to bear to the actual market. It sounds very like the kind of "valuation" that Zoopla does...