Shared Ownership - selling back to HA after 100% staircase

emiliaczek

Hello - this may be a bit unusual but in the current market seems best option.

My husband and I have staircased our SO flat to 100% nearly 3 years ago and at the same time removed the clause of first refusal (where we would have to go via HA to sell first before going to open market).

We tried to sell our flat last year but with no success. The London market is bad given Brexit uncertainty, but I also suspect that given this was a SO it doesn’t compare as well against other flats on the market.

Either way, my question is - although we’ve removed HA right, can we still offer to sell it via SO route making the property SO again?
If yes - how does it work? Would HA buy it and then go back into selling a share whilst renting the rest?

Thanks in advance!

00ec25

obviously you can ask the HA if they want to buy it, equally easily they can refuse, as can any random stranger you may ask in the street

if they do buy they they will be its owner and can do what they want with it, you have no say in being able to market it as SO since they would then be its 100% owner. So no, of course you cannot market it as SO when you are selling 100% to the person who buys it.

you can't have your cake and eat it. You need to adjust your expectations of what you think the property is "worth" because apparently no one else agrees with you otherwise it would have sold by now

Pixie5740

It's no longer a SO Property because you have staircased to 100% so that shouldn't impact it's saleability because it will be the same as any other flat for sale where a HA is the freeholder. Nor can you turn it back into a SO flat because you're not a social landlord.

If it's not selling then usually it comes down to price. When you had it on the market did you get viewing? If so what was the feedback?

emiliaczek

Thanks for your reply!

Yes I understand that if HA was to buy it they could do as they wish with it. I suppose I wanted to understand how it works selling 100% to them vs the usual lower percentage (e.g. 25%).
I’ve read that if people staircased to higher percentage like 75% it is harder for them to sell as not many first time buyers are interested in a larger share. Which suggests HA is trying to sell the 75% rather than purchase 75% and then sell on 25% to new SO buyer.
It is my assumption that if HA was to buy 100% then they would go back into SO mode and sell 25% and rent out the rest..
I suppose it doesn’t matter as long as they wanted to buy it.

emiliaczek

Technically it is not an SO flat anymore, however we are still tied to the HA as our service charge and heating/hot water is still paid to them.
Also they are still he leaseholder (with freehold belonging to the owner of the building) - non-SO flats wouldn’t have HA in that chain.
Yes we had some viewings and an offer - I agree we need to adjust our expectations especially in the current market.
I just wanted to understand that there is an option to sell it back to HA, which we may want to explore alongside the open market.

Pixie5740

emiliaczek wrote: »

Technically it is not an SO flat anymore, however we are still tied to the HA as our service charge and heating/hot water is still paid to them.
Also they are still he leaseholder (with freehold belonging to the owner of the building) - non-SO flats wouldn’t have HA in that chain.
Yes we had some viewings and an offer - I agree we need to adjust our expectations especially in the current market.
I just wanted to understand that there is an option to sell it back to HA, which we may want to explore alongside the open market.

It's not a technicality it's a fact, the flat is no longer shared ownership.

Are you not the leaseholder of the flat with the housing association as the freeholder? There are lots of leasehold flats for sale that aren't and never were shared ownership properties where the council or a housing association is the freeholder.

[Deleted User]

I suspect it is a very unlikely possibility but the best people to ask are probably the HA you purchased it from? I would make that my first port of call.

Is there a problem with the valuation at the time you staircased and now it won't sell at that price (or higher) and you wonder if you could get a higher price if you sell it back to the HA? I'm afraid SO valuations are often a bit higher than the market value. It can often work out in the long term, but not the short term. (I bought 50% of a shared ownership for £45k in 1998, it would be worth many times that now, but at the time it was expensive compared to other properties, if I could have raised a mortgage for the whole amount). Its like Help to Buy schemes, enables you to buy, but at a higher price overall.

emiliaczek

00ec25 wrote: »

obviously you can ask the HA if they want to buy it, equally easily they can refuse, as can any random stranger you may ask in the street

if they do buy they they will be its owner and can do what they want with it, you have no say in being able to market it as SO since they would then be its 100% owner. So no, of course you cannot market it as SO when you are selling 100% to the person who buys it.

you can't have your cake and eat it. You need to adjust your expectations of what you think the property is "worth" because apparently no one else agrees with you otherwise it would have sold by now

Pixie5740 wrote: »

It's not a technicality it's a fact, the flat is no longer shared ownership.

Are you not the leaseholder of the flat with the housing association as the freeholder? There are lots of leasehold flats for sale that aren't and never were shared ownership properties where the council or a housing association is the freeholder.

We are a leaseholder but so is HA. We’ve only found out about this as now the freeholder is planning to sell the freehold and as much as we would be interested in buying it as a now non-SO flat it turns out that for all the SO flats incl ex-SO flats it’s the HA who can buy the freehold and not us.
As I explained above - yes we have staircased to 100% and factually are not SO anymore - but the fact remains that we are very much firmly tied into HA whilst other non-SO flats in the building would have nothing to do with HA at all.

Pixie5740

What exactly have you staircased to own 100% of if not the leasehold?

AndyTails

Pixie5740 wrote: »

What exactly have you staircased to own 100% of if not the leasehold?

A sub-lease, presumably?

emiliaczek

AndyTails wrote: »

A sub-lease, presumably?

It does seem to be the case..