New choice home buy

54ahouse

We have been accepted for Ownhome, and Mychoice. We live in Berkshire, have a 2 1/2 year old and 16 week old twins. Ideally we would love a 4 bed house, but a big enough 3 bed would do.

Ownhome is quite restricted as you can only use CoOp for the mortgage, they would only take my basic salary into account. No commission, over time, or tax credits which for us accounts for a large part of our income. The max property value on this scheme was 175000. Couldn't even buy a new 2 bed apartment. If I was a single person these figures would be great for a bachelor pad, but for 5 of us?

Mychoice seems much more realistic. We could look for houses with 1 bed more than our current requirement, we took this to mean 4 beds, but they will not loan more than 140k. Sounds great. Once we had the acceptance we arranged for one of the panel IFA's to visit us. She was very helpful and knew of mortgage lenders for this scheme that would look at all our income. She advised Catalyst should go to 50% equity loan, but will have to authorise anything over 90k and on that basis we could look for houses up to 244k. Brilliant. We went to the local new development (June is there year end, deals to be done). Had an offer of 244k accepted on a new 4 bed end terrace town house from an asking price of 265k. Negotiated carpets, turf, stamp duty paid. Over the moon! IFA contacted Catalyst for auth as over 90k. They said would not go over 90k, twins still young 3 bed should be enough!. New figure of 214k. Incredibly disappointed, it's hard to find a big enough 3 bed for this price, that we like, twins need alot of room, 2 cots etc.. In fact it's hard enough to find a 3 bed house for 244k.

Sorry to go on, but had to get it off my chest, so disappointed about losing the house of our dreams, the info we first received never mentioned the 90k only we could look for 1 bed more than needed and the limit was 140k.

This is a budget of 90k more than we would otherwise have, but still can't find a suitable home.

With house prices still falling I hope we find another dream home within the new limits.

SquatNow

And here we have the reason the housing market isn't going to "recover".

Normal people on Normal wages simply cant afford a normal house.

Until a normal person in a normal job can afford a normal house, prices will drop.

The fact that the normal person above on normal wages couldn't even afford 50% of a normal house, tell you how far prices will drop.

wymondham

Addy1 wrote: »

Of course everyone has the "right" to buy there own home. As long as you can afford it you can buy whatever you want.

Key workers are essential (imagine a town without teachers, nurses, police officers) and they are totally priced out of the market in many areas, therefore leading to a shortage in those areas. This is an incentive to help such essential people live nearer to where they work, thus providing for the local community.

My partner is a copper and he gets less help from such schemes than those in the South East as we live in a more affordable area. However would be entitled to some of the schemes as as a single bobby you cannot afford a mortgage here on any property.

But where do the cleaners, dinner ladies, traffic wardens, caretakers to run the schools the key worker teachers work at etc. live if they are not 'key' workers - they have the same housing pressures as teachers/nurses etc..... this is very discriminatory ... surely EVERYONE is priced out.. (not for too much longer though:D )

SquatNow

wymondham wrote: »

But where do the cleaners, dinner ladies, traffic wardens, caretakers to run the schools the key worker teachers work at etc. live if they are not 'key' workers - they have the same housing pressures as teachers/nurses etc..... this is very discriminatory ... surely EVERYONE is priced out.. (not for too much longer though:D )

Agreed this is the problem... define "key worker".

What about the man who works in the petrol station... without him nurses couldn't get fuel to get to work. Or the shelf fillers in the supermarkets... nurses have to eat. What about the people at the warehouses where all the car parts are stored... without them the nurses cars would break down and couldn't be repaired. Or what about the man that fixes the computers in the offices of the companies that make the medical equipment?

Government definition of key worker: A trained white person who works for the government.

I've worked out the correct definition though: Everyone with a job APART from politicians.

No, seriously, there is no other job where if the people doing it just stopped working for 3 months, nothing bad would happen. I know, because politicians do it... they take a 3 month summer break and NO-ONE NOTICES!

So, Nurses = Key workers. Politicians = Not Needed.

So which one get a £23,000 allowance a year to pay for accomodation???

wheresmydoshat

we have had a dreadful experience with Moat.

having applied for open market scheme months ago, we finally got some progress last month.

then out of the blue last week, having never even spoken with us they sent us a letter rejecting our application on the grounds they had concluded we could afford a house without them. we are still none the wiser as to how they have calculated this.

glo has now been mentioned as an alternative but i am only just reading up on it.

moat have been awful from start to finish. no urgency to their service, and very few staff willing to help.

we are having to seriously consider whether we even want their help.

puddy

Hi, I was wondering if someone can answer this query. My partner is looking to buy a property. He is renting a HA property in East London from what used to be East Thames (now 'One' I think), anyway, he would like to buy on the south coast because places are cheaper and we are looking to relocate. He has just taken redundancy so has a deposit from this and when he gets another job wants to apply for a mortgage. Because he currently lives in an area where he wouldnt be buying, who does he go to, to apply for the homebuy loan?
Also, if the deposit and the homebuy loan was enough to get a place without an additional mortgage, can he do that, or does he have to have a mortgage as well?

thanks

mell242

I'm getting rather confused about these new schemes too. I'm hoping that either way one of them can help us out. My partner and I had a SO house in London but had to sell that when we relocated with my partner's work. We are now currently renting privately and have our first baby due in October. Currently our salaries are too high (joint £61,000pa which is £1000 over the qualifying threshold for SO in our area) for any of these schemes. We have been happy renting privately until now but I with a baby on the way it would be nice to have some kind of stability for the next few years without fear of being asked to move out.

I am not a great fan of new build developments so these new options do seem appealing. I am not planning on returning to work full time after the baby arrives so our salary will drop to £35,000pa which means that we will have no chance of buying on the open market.

I do have a couple of questions though:

• I'm hoping to investigate once on maternity leave but I'm wondering if the relevant HA will take into consideration our drop in salary immediately or do what the tax credits system does and look at what you earnt in the last year?
• I'm also wondering if there is anything else we should be doing to assist our 'case'? ie. signing up with the council for council housing?
• Finally, one of the reasons that I am interested in this scheme is the fact you appear to be able to buy anywhere, not just in your area. I am keen to move nearer to my mother who is on her own and needs assistance, would/could this be taken into consideration?

orfoster

Hi all,

I had a letter out of the blue from Swaythlings Housing about 6 weeks ago now offering us information on the My Choice Home Buy scheme. We had previously registered with Home2Own so they passed on our details.

We have now had our loan offer for a house we are buying for £124,995 from my Dad, we are both key workers and on the housing list. Now we haven't had the problem yet but we were told that we could only have one spare bedroom which is fair enough as there are only two of us but its the house we live in that we are buying and also are getting it for a very cheap price. 3 bed houses are about £144,000 in our area and two beds are around the same price.

The lady that we have been dealing with who is very helpful says she doesn't think it will be a problem as the price is the same as a two bed.

We should be up and running on the scheme in the next week or so, she did say we need to have a Homebuyers Report completed on the house by the lender and that she would need a copy and also for us to send her pictures of the house and bedrooms.

wheresmydoshat

good luck with that one.

we have been so restricted when it has come to our application that we've come a full circle back to not using it.

the first application we were told after 3 months that we were in the higher salary bracket they allowed so had less chance of being approved (then why have the salary bracket go that high).

the second which appeared to have been the one we should originally have gone for (GLO) has a deadline of 30 september. and as moat have only just gotten round to telling us about it, if we missed the deadline the whole thing would fall through.

leaving us with the third option, which is the new scheme which from first look we couldn't afford the repayments on.

so we are back to square one, unable to buy a house, and with no workable help to do so.

wymondham

wheresmydoshat wrote: »

good luck with that one.

we have been so restricted when it has come to our application that we've come a full circle back to not using it.

the first application we were told after 3 months that we were in the higher salary bracket they allowed so had less chance of being approved (then why have the salary bracket go that high).

the second which appeared to have been the one we should originally have gone for (GLO) has a deadline of 30 september. and as moat have only just gotten round to telling us about it, if we missed the deadline the whole thing would fall through.

leaving us with the third option, which is the new scheme which from first look we couldn't afford the repayments on.

so we are back to square one, unable to buy a house, and with no workable help to do so.

possibly a lucky escape? - in a while you'll be able to get the house you want without these schemes....