Mortgage for 74 year old on shared ownership house?

elljay

Morning helpful people!  The subject line pretty well says it all.  I'm 74, living in social housing which I hate with drug taking and loud bang bang music all day on one side and a car graveyard on the other side.  I'm pretty tolerant and we get on fine but having had a clean bill of health at my annual check up the other day feel I'd really like to move rather than hang around here for the next few years.    My income is around £17k pa after tax from various pensions, I also have around £6k pa from a little job and other bits and pieces which obviously could change in the future.  And around £42k in savings.  Although difficult to find I thought a little 2 bed shared ownership house might be a good idea, though obviously you can get bad neighbours everywhere but a small development might be better than this housing 'scheme'

I've looked for exchanges with nothing nice and also private renting where rents have shot through the roof.  At least SO will protect my savings rather than spend on rent.

I know the general advice is to stay in social housing as rents are lower and repairs are done but the repairs done here are so shoddy I don't bother  reporting them any more, I just sort them myself.

Although I understand the basics of how SO works I am struggling to work out how it might work in my circumstances.  Is there anywhere independent I can ask or other source of advice?  Or perhaps one of you could advise?  Or perhaps it's a non-starter!!  If there's a company that is sympathetic to older mortgagees I'd love to have details.

Thank you so much!

ACG

You could do with speaking to a mortgage broker I think. @kingstreet I think is probably far more knowledgeable on this than I am. 

A £17k income gets a mortgage of maybe £70-80k, but as soon as you add rent and service charge in, that drops quickly. I put down £400pm and that drops to around £10k mortgage. 

But shared ownership is not my bag so I am not able to offer a lot of help im afraid. I think a lot will be determined by what (if any) benefits/support you have available to you as without any, I think you may struggle. 

elljay

Ah interesting thank you.  So if I add that £10k to my £40k savings then that would give me 25% of a £200k  house.  Hopefully I can find something for less than that.

Or is it not that simple?  Probably not!!

itsthelittlethings

Can you afford to pay the rent and service charge on top?

You may not get away from social housing issues. I live in shared ownership, it’s within a social housing block and we have barking dogs, drug dealers and rubbish dumped in the bike sheds.

elljay

Oh no!!!!  I expect it's a risk anywhere though.  But I really want to move and thought this would be a way of making a new start.   I pay rent and service charge now so if the mortgage was low I could pay it with no problem - depending on the amount obviously.  I'm pretty frugal!!!

I'm mostly tempted by the tiny house movement but finding somewhere to site the tiny house means this probably wouldn't work.

Thanks for the reality check though.

strawb_shortcake

Can you not look for sheltered/independent living type complexes? These may offer something a little quieter with more similar minded neighbours.

elljay

Thank you for the idea but not quite yet.  My mother was 95 before she decided that would be the next best step - and then didn't like living in a community where people kept checking up on each other.  I have those genes.  I visualised a nice little development where there were families, a playground nearby for my young grandchildren when they visit, people walking their dogs like me, general family life. But otherwise left on my own. Will keep researching, thanks everyone.

Any other ideas gratefully received - however off the wall - sorry this has gone a bit off topic.

housebuyer143

My sister lives in shared ownership and it's part of the housing association development. I think a lot of shared ownership properties actually are. 
That being said, they built the shared ownership ones on the nice side of the estate and is with other shared ownership houses so she has no trouble at all at her house. She says it's the best thing she did as you otherwise would never have got on the housing ladder.

I would look online and see if you can find any developments coming up because normally it's first come first served so they're very hard to get. When my sister was looking one development had a release date and time on which to register your interest and she was on there on the second and got at the top of the list which is how she got her house. 

If you have £50,000 you should be able to buy the house share outright, but it really depends what's going. Any rent element is claimable from benefits if you are struggling, so if you found that once you use your savings to buy the house you were struggling with the rent. You might be able to get help towards it. 

Dobbibill

Have you looked at exchange in social housing out of your area? Exchanges can be done across different housing  associations. EG moving from Plymouth to Norwich.

Maybe not something so many miles apart for you personally but you may find something in a neighbouring social housing provider. 

I can't comment on the shared ownership option sorry.

strawb_shortcake

elljay said:

Thank you for the idea but not quite yet.  My mother was 95 before she decided that would be the next best step - and then didn't like living in a community where people kept checking up on each other.  I have those genes.  I visualised a nice little development where there were families, a playground nearby for my young grandchildren when they visit, people walking their dogs like me, general family life. But otherwise left on my own. Will keep researching, thanks everyone.

Any other ideas gratefully received - however off the wall - sorry this has gone a bit off topic.

Boat, static home? 

Some of the sheltered housing or independent living places are quite modern  and residents are  largely left to their own devices

AntySoo

One idea could be a Lifetime Lease (over 60s only) where the cost of buying is about 50% of the price to regular buyers.  I haven’t looked into it in great detail but it appears that you would be buying a lease for your lifetime and it expires with you.  If you live to be 100 then it’s probably a great deal. The chances are in the majority of cases the leasing company benefits the most.  It would also depend on whether you want anyone to inherit from you. 

What I can wholeheartedly recommend you do not do is buy a flat in a retirement development.  They are incredibly hard to sell and lose value from day 1.  It sounds as though you wouldn’t go there anyway.  My mum bought one new and had an incredibly happy 5 years before she died.  It then took 4 years to sell at a loss of about £120k.

Another idea - subject to the size of your dog and whether you have sea legs is to live on a cruise ship - apparently it’s cheaper than living on land!

Best of luck whatever you decide to do.