Half a house

Silence101

Happy New Year!

It’s been a while since I’ve been here.
We’ve been very fortunate as we’ve received a lump sum from an inheritance which means I was able to overpay the 10% limit for this year. We will continue to save to hopefully build up a good percentage to OP in October. I’m not sure we’ll be able to match the 10% OP limit next year, but any amount will help.
I keep worrying about how much the mortgage might go up at the end of the fixed term, as the interest will double if the SVR rates stay at what they are. Hopefully we’ll be in a strong position to remortgage when the time comes.

wishingthemortgaheaway

Welcome back Silence & Happy NewYear.

I hope you all treated yourselves to a little something with the inheritance money as well as paying your 10%?

What difference has it made to the monthly interest applied?

Silence101

Hi!
Yes, we’re planning on updating a few things at home, although I did feel a bit put out when I did the mature thing and OPed :rotfl: We are trying hard to make sure we spend it on stuff that will improve our lifestyle long term, and not just frittered away on random stuff.

I think it’s saved us £10 a month on interest, but I’m not sure if our monthly payments will go down now, as I think they recalculate amounts if we OP over £500. So I think long term we’ll still be saving money, but I’m not 100% sure we’ll be saving as much as we thought...

In other news, Mr S has noticed that newer houses on the estate are now being sold at £5K less than what we bought. So I guess we’d be in negative equity if I hadn’t OPed. Scary thought as we’ve only just bought the house. I was expecting the value to go down in the next few years (as it’s a new build) but not so soon!

Silence101

We received a letter from the mortgage provider, and our payments have gone down £25/month. They’ve given us the option to shorten the term, but we’ve decided not to do that, just in case things go pear shaped in the future. We’ll be saving the difference to OP in October though.

We’ve been here a few months now and have noticed the living room hardly gets any natural light, so I’m thinking about getting a few bright floor lamps. I really don’t like being in the dark during the day, it makes me feels really unproductive. I’m also trying to figure a better layout for our furniture, to try and get the table closer to the garden doors, to get the tiny bit of light there is.
I can’t wait for spring now, as I want to plant a lot more flowers in the garden. The turf seems to have recovered fairly well compared to how it was when we got the keys, but as the garden is in the shade all day, the grass is constantly soggy. Again I’m hoping spring/summer will improve things.

Silence101

I cleared the cache and data a while ago, and forgot my login details, but I!!!8217;m back on track!

We!!!8217;ve slowly been building our savings, and should be able to OP the maximum amount come October. I don!!!8217;t know how much longer we!!!8217;ll be able to OP the max, so we!!!8217;re taking advantage while we can afford to. We still not planning on staircasing yet, as we don!!!8217;t know how long we!!!8217;re planning on living here.
Our garden is a huge swamp thanks to all the rain we!!!8217;ve had, and the drainage is pretty rubbish. I think we!!!8217;re going to have to lift up all the turf and sort out the soil underneath before we!!!8217;re going to see any improvements. But maybe a few sunny days will solve most of the problem (I!!!8217;m hoping so, but I!!!8217;m not convinced!)
The flowers I planted are starting to come out, but I!!!8217;ve realised I need to plant a lot more to make it look like a cottage garden. The packets always say plant at 20 cm intervals, but that leaves a lot of bare soil!

We!!!8217;ve also found a lot of damp under the flooring in the bathroom, so I!!!8217;m running the dehumidifier to try and solve that. Mr S thinks that the vinyl was cut too small, so the water is leaking under the edge of the bath and the floor. We!!!8217;re planning on phoning the HA, but are half expecting them to say it!!!8217;s our problem to sort. At least vinyl flooring is fairly cheap if we do need to pay for it ourselves.

wishingthemortgaheaway

Welcome back, I was wondering how you were getting on. I thought you'd abandoned us as you'd hit your maximum overpayment allowance.

It's worth doing some research finding out if people
Would prefer to buy as a shared ownership or as an owned outright home.
My brother is having a nightmare with his (well, his wife's really) they either want to buy the lot, so they can sell as owned, or for the ha to buy their share back off them, but they won't do either. Next door, under the same scheme was in danger of repossession so they bought out the part owner and then rented it back to her, so brother wants the same deal on theirs (so they can move, not so that they can rent it back).

BookmobileBadGirl

Another shared owner here, and I recognised a lot of the same thoughts and worries reading through your diary.

I only have a mortgage on 25% and was planning to buy another 25% when the two year fix was up in December however things haven't gone as planned on the job hunt so may only be able to buy another 15% so am still trying to work out if that is financially worthwhile.

Silence101

Thanks!
Wish - we!!!8217;re lucky that we can in principle buy the whole lot. There were other schemes around where we were only allowed to buy up to 80% so we!!!8217;d never get the freehold. From what they!!!8217;ve said, once we buy 100% we get the freehold. And that!!!8217;s another issue, because once the leasehold goes past a certain point, the sale of the house gets more expensive.

Book - it!!!8217;s all a balance isn!!!8217;t, between cheaper rent, more mortgage and all the fees. We would have to pay for admin fees, solicitor fees and valuation fees before we could staircase, meaning that our savings would quickly be eaten up. At the moment, I!!!8217;m a stay at home mum, so it!!!8217;ll be interesting to see what we can afford once I go back to work.

Silence101

Sorry about all the numbers when I use punctuation. I’m not sure why it’s doing that!

ChasingSunshine

It's been a problem for people using phones or tablets. It's something to do with smart pronuncination. On iPhone its in setting under keyboard. If you are using something else just google turn off smart pronunciation for whatever device it is.

Good news that you can get the freehold if you buy the whole house. Lots of calculations and planning through different scenarios to be done I guess