Help ! housing association suddenly appeared

floss2

Don't be a snob.

My parents lived in "social housing" for over 30 years on an estate with a mix of rented & owner occupied homes. My father was a senior civil servant, my mum worked in Local Government. I also lived in "social housing" for over 5 years before moving to my present home, I also work in Local Government, with 2 sons at university.

Every Council in England has an obligation to provide affordable housing - every developer in England has the same obligation as part of their planning permission.

It is quite likely that they are being sold as shared ownership properties to key-workers who cannot afford the full price being askde for by the developer.

terrierlady

why pay 5% that usally comes at exchange normal reservation fee is between £99 for ftbrs and upto £1k for others so you must have been asked for a lot up front. i would imagine that you were shown plans of the development and ran through a reservation pre check list with the agent/ THIS COVERS ALL PLANS KITCHEN LAYOUT LANDSCAPING ROADS ETC/social housing and where they are positioned.
MAYBE THE DEVELOPER SOLD THE REMAINING PLOTS TO SOCIAL HOUSING WHAT ABOUT THESE INVESTMENT CLUB PURCHASES WHICH RENT OUT TO ALL AND SUNDRY YOU MAYBE FEARING THE WORSE, MAY NOT BE AS BAD AS YOU IMAGINE COULD INDEED BE KEY WORKERS.
ask the question on site arrange to meet the sales manager under the property mis discription act if social housing is on the plan and now a days it will be, you should have been shown the layout etc.

pinkshoes

floss2 wrote: »

Don't be a snob.

My parents lived in "social housing" for over 30 years on an estate with a mix of rented & owner occupied homes. My father was a senior civil servant, my mum worked in Local Government. I also lived in "social housing" for over 5 years before moving to my present home, I also work in Local Government, with 2 sons at university.

I lived (rented) on a new build estate where 1/3 were housing association properties. I HATED IT! TBH, most were fine, but it was 1 or 2 households that ruined it for everyone (street fights, vile language, petty crime, domestics and yelling), plus there were kids running riot everywhere which usually resulted in car damage (scratches, dents, smashed windows/screens) that would not get paid for.

When buying a property, I looked at newbuild, but ALWAYS asked if any were sold to HA, as I didn't want to live on a development like this again. It's not being snobby, it's excercising my right to want a peaceful life based on past experience!

My conclusion was small developments (15 or less properties in an area where no more new builds could be built, and preferably done my a local builder/designer, not a mass production company) were fine, and anything else new was a big NO NO for me!

As you have it in writing that there would be no HA properties, I would see this as a definite reason for being allowed to pull out.

Floss, no one is saying all HA tenants are bad, but it is a well known fact that if you live in a street with HA properties, then statistically you are much more likely to end up with problem tenants, and I can't describe how depressing that is!

immoral_angeluk

I live in a housing assocation house.. not on an estate, but on a street with a mix of HA/private proprties.
Let's just say you can tell which ones are ha! :rotfl: Not us though obviously
Part of me wants to defend HA tenants but the realistic part of me is saying that if I were buying a house I wouldn't want to live amongst HA tenants... if only for the reason that you never know what kind of person could be living there one month to the next...

Our row has 3 houses. We're the middle one. One set of neighbours has the constant smell of cannabis coming from their house (even with 2 kids, one my daughters age) and the other neighbour is a single mum who can be heard screaming at her poor child at all hours..... usually just as ours have gone to bed.. :rolleyes:

You have my sympathies and if you can get out of it then I'd definately recommend it!

gfplux

In my opinion you should NOT proceed with this purchase. You can only draw one conclusion from the replies to your original post. You also must have a view on housing associations as this was something that concerned you at the beginning.
Simple but complicated result. Do not Buy.
If you have exchanged you must see your solicitor immediately with a view to undoing the deal due to breach of contract.

Debt_Free_Chick

It is very rare now to find a new development with planning permission for anything else, except mixed owner/occupied and affordable housing. From memory, the threshold is five properties, so a development of more than five properties will NOT get PP unless it includes a proportion of affordable housing.

Affordable housing used to mean what is often called "social" housing these days and there is supposed to be a subtle distinction. Social housing is meant to imply a direct replacement for Council housing i.e. for those who need to be housed "by society" as the occupants cannot afford to buy (or in some cases even rent) without Council assistance.

However, as there is very little now in the way of council houses, such tenants are usually housed by social landlords e.g. LLs who let their property to the Council for 3-5 years, so the council can house those who need to be accommodated.

Affordable housing can (but not always) mean something very different. These days, it's meant to imply the system of shared ownership, where FTBs are helped onto the property ladder through a part-rent/part-own property. The HA owns the property at outset and then sells half a share in each property to "worthy" applicants. These might be key workers in urban areas, especially London and other price hot-spots. London needs police, nurses, fire fighters etc .... but they need to live relatively close to their place of work. They can't afford to in many places, without assistance from the Key Worker scheme, which gives them access to affordable housing.

Affordable housing is only going to increase. It must do. We're even getting it in our sleepy village, as locals born & bred here cannot afford to buy, when the average price of village properties is over half a million!!

Central Government is increasingly imposing targets on local authorities to increase the amount of affordable housing - hence, new developments will 99% of the time include affordable housing, otherwise PP won't be granted.

I'm almost certainly splitting from my partner. I shall need to buy affordable housing if I want to stay in the area. I see no stigma at all and think that some people are confused with the labels.

It might be worth digging a little deeper before assuming that affordable housing is automatically bad news. In some cases and in the past, this might have been so. But we're all going to find ourselves living near to affordable housing in the future.

If you think that's something to worry about .... wait until the numbers of permanent and transit traveller sites are increased ... another target that Central Government has pushed out to the local authorities

Debt_Free_Chick

alienbb wrote: »

I have bought a house in a new housing development consisted of 23 private dwellings. I was told when we bought the house that there is no housing association building in the development.

alienbb wrote: »

yes, but it is not in contract, it's kind of like an additional notes saying there is no HA in this development, and now they have sent us an update saying there is 12 house sold to HA...

I think the developer has carefully chosen their words here.

At the time that these statements were made, it seems that it was true that "there is no housing assocation on this development".

I wonder what the answer would have been if you had then gone on to ask .... "and is there any intention to sell to a Housing Association" or better still "and does your planning permission require you to earmark a percentage of the development as "affordable housing" to be managed by a housing association".

I reckon the answer to both those follow-up questions would have been "yes" - simply because almost all new developments must include affordable housing in order to get planning permission.

As you are close to exchange, the developer would know that your solicitor would have to check out the planning decision and it's almost certain that affordable housing was a condition of the planning permission.

I don't think you should assume that this will automatically be "bad news" though. You might want to find out who the HA is and see what you can find out about their plans for the properties they're buying.

You might simply find the properties being sold to key workers, like the police, nurses, fire-fighters, teachers etc ..... or is that your worst fear

sooz

Debt_Free_Chick wrote: »

It is very rare now to find a new development with planning permission for anything else, except mixed owner/occupied and affordable housing. From memory, the threshold is five properties, so a development of more than five properties will NOT get PP unless it includes a proportion of affordable housing.

I thought it was 13 properties, which is why there are lots of newbuilds near me which all have exactly 12 flats.

Debt_Free_Chick

sooz wrote: »

I thought it was 13 properties, which is why there are lots of newbuilds near me which all have exactly 12 flats.

I can't remember .... but think it also might vary from one local authority to another. Some developments are 100% affordable housing - especially in rural areas, where there's generally no new development allowed - but an "exception" is made for affordable housing.

floss2

Threshold is 25 units / homes outside London, 15 inside London. Percentage is between 10-50% of any particular site dependant upon local Planning policy.