Buy a flat or shared ownership house?

indigoblue11

Im looking at SO because this is the only way I can afford to buy on my own. Ive been reading about leasehold and read some horror stories but you guys seem to be ok with it. So you can buy the freehold in the end by stair casing. I need to read more up on that.

Lmm08

Is there anyone to be given a bigger mortgage. The the online checkers say I can borrow £113,000 as I said before house around here are much much more expensive than that 

Lmm08

Anyone know if there’s anyway to borrow more for a bigger mortgage? Online soft checks only say up to £113,000 but houses around here start at around £160,000

Thank you for the info about shared ownership. I don’t think I’ll go for it. A woman at work is trying to sell her shared ownership houses abs there’s lots of extra fees because of the shared ownership part 

NinjaTune

Shared ownerships can be hard to sell as they have a more restricted market in terms of buyers.

The only way you'll get a bigger mortgage is to earn more, though I understand 95% LTV mortgages are now 'back' following today's budget.

@indigoblue11 not all leasehold properties are a nightmare so don't necessarily rule them out.  A long lease with low ground rent/service charge is not necessarily a bad option.  I've just bought  2 bed ex LA/HA maisonette in a decent area with a 174 year lease, £10pa ground rent and no service charge.  It has good sized rooms too - 20 ft living room, 16 x 9 master bedroom, 13 x 10 second bedroom. Until you staircase to 100% any shared ownership is going to be leasehold anyway.

indigoblue11

NinjaTune said:

Shared ownerships can be hard to sell as they have a more restricted market in terms of buyers.

The only way you'll get a bigger mortgage is to earn more, though I understand 95% LTV mortgages are now 'back' following today's budget.

@indigoblue11 not all leasehold properties are a nightmare so don't necessarily rule them out.  A long lease with low ground rent/service charge is not necessarily a bad option.  I've just bought  2 bed ex LA/HA maisonette in a decent area with a 174 year lease, £10pa ground rent and no service charge.  It has good sized rooms too - 20 ft living room, 16 x 9 master bedroom, 13 x 10 second bedroom. Until you staircase to 100% any shared ownership is going to be leasehold anyway.

That’s really helpful and certainly given me food for thought. I found a shared ownership I really liked. Only to find the mortgage company won’t look at me while I’m on 1 day furlough. 

Lmm08

I’ve checked my credit score in Experian and found out my rating is “excellent” ! so pleased. Through this it seems I was offered £125,000 mortgage which was higher than I found before I checked my credit rating.

I don’t quite understand the 5% deposit... As I’m offering £125,000 mortgage I’ll still need at least £25k deposit saved if I wanted to buy a £150,000 house anyway? Or is it more for people who are struggling to get accepted for a mortgage. 

Tokmon

Lmm08 said:

I’ve checked my credit score in Experian and found out my rating is “excellent” ! so pleased. Through this it seems I was offered £125,000 mortgage which was higher than I found before I checked my credit rating.

I don’t quite understand the 5% deposit... As I’m offering £125,000 mortgage I’ll still need at least £25k deposit saved if I wanted to buy a £150,000 house anyway? Or is it more for people who are struggling to get accepted for a mortgage. 

Unfortunately your credit score has no bearing on whether or not you will be offered a mortgage. Mortgage providers will look at the actual information on your credit report along with additional information to determine whether or not they want to offer you the mortgage. 

5% deposit means that someone only needs to put down a 5% deposit and can borrow the rest if they want to buy a house (assuming that the total of the two is enough money which in your case it seems it isn't).

Tokmon

When it comes to shared ownership there are good and bad schemes just like most things.

I know of one scheme which is designed to be affordable and they offer around 50% ownership of the property and there is no rent on the other 50% at all so this makes it extremely affordable and these are also very easy to sell and they have a waiting list of people looking to buy when the next one comes up for sale.

Other schemes i have heard of a lot of issues with fees and expensive rent.

So don't rule shared ownership out completely you just need to look into the particular scheme in detail before you agree to anything.