Shared Ownership with Home Group

ImranBro

Hi,

As you may have seen from my posts, I'm about to take the plunge with a New Build Shared Ownership property with an Housing Association called Home Group

I wanted to find out if any of you lovely people have gone with them either renting or shared ownership and what your experiences have been like. Are they overly strict on matters for requests to changes to the house?

The lease (which forms part of the contract) seems to have lots of clauses for example erecting a satellite dish requires prior permission as does any sort of external changes. Plus they seem to charge £100 + VAT for any changes which I thought was a fair amount.

Would be good to know what your experiences have been with them and how matters have been dealt.

Many thanks,[FONT=&quot][/FONT]

Cakeguts

It sounds as if you don't really understand what leasehold means. A lease is a long term rental with all the rent money paid in one go at the start. The freeholder owns the building not you. So if you want to put up a satellite dish you have to pay the owner of the building to use their property for your dish. Any other external changes are also to something owned by someone else, the freeholder not you so the freehold owner can charge for changes to their property. If you don't want to have to pay the owner of the building for changes to their building don't buy the lease.

SamsReturn

https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/homegroup.org.uk

teddysmum

You do realise that you are responsible for maintenance although they own the property ?

ImranBro

It sounds as if you don't really understand what leasehold means. A lease is a long term rental with all the rent money paid in one go at the start. The freeholder owns the building not you. So if you want to put up a satellite dish you have to pay the owner of the building to use their property for your dish. Any other external changes are also to something owned by someone else, the freeholder not you so the freehold owner can charge for changes to their property. If you don't want to have to pay the owner of the building for changes to their building don't buy the lease.

I thought as I will be owning a 50% share that I would have some right over it.

ImranBro

You do realise that you are responsible for maintenance although they own the property ?

Yes I do know that.

glitteringgem

Hi

I have a shared ownership flat (75%) with Home Group. No major problems to report although they do seem slow to act upon issues. I had a new satellite dish fitted 2 years ago and didn't contact Home Group before this, although neighbours already had dishes in place.

They are slow on general maintenance of communal areas and outside of the building. IE exterior paintwork has only been painted once in the past 15 years and this took a vast amount of chasing!

Hope this is useful to your query.

Cakeguts

ImranBro wrote: »

I thought as I will be owning a 50% share that I would have some right over it.

You could have 100% share and you still wouldn't have any right to do anything to the building because the actual building won't belong to you. It still belongs to the housing association. All you have is a lease which gives you the right to live in the building belonging to the housing association. You will have to pay towards the care of the building and the cleaning of the common parts but you will never own any part of the building that the flat is in and you will have to ask permission to put anything onto the building that you don't own.