Home Improvement Grant

jbatista

Hi all, I have inherited my late fathers house and my family and I are going to move into the house in the next 2/3 weeks, currently living in rented council accomodation. My husband is on disabilty benifits and we have 2 children under the age of 16.
The house needs some updating-new heating system (the boiler thats in there will only allow heating and water on time or constant, no option for water only) and needs a rewire.
I have been in contact with warmfront over the heating and they are going to come out and assess us sometime before christmas.
I have also been in contact with the local council over help with a grant for the rewire but they have no money left over in the budget and next year the lady on the phone said they were looking into an equity loan on the house instead of grants
has anyone else got anyother ideas at all?

cattie

What the council mean by an equity loan may well be that they have a contractor carry out the work & that the cost is covered under an interest free loan to you that can either be repaid in the normal way or that they put a charge on your property, which means when the house is sold they recoup the money from the proceeds of the sale.

This is the way my local authority administers grants for essential household repairs for home owners who qualify for home improvement help on disability grounds.

The drawback is that it's a more costly way of doing things as they tend to use just a couple of preferred contractors, so you don't an opportunity to get different quotes for the work & chose the best value for money quote or get a say in who does the work. It can sometimes work out twice as expensive having the work done under the home improvement scheme because of this.

You may be better to see if you can borrow the money from the bank using the equity in the property as security & getting the work done yourselves.

jbatista

Bump this has anyone else got any ideas over what I have written in the post above?