Dont know of any specific schemes but you could try asking your Local Authority (housing). They will be aware of any Housing Associations operating in the area so you can contact these directly for info. You may have to apply to a waiting list and fulfil certain criteria. All HA have their own criteria depending on the housing situation in the area so you will have to confirm this with them directly. Also could try planning? In some areas, a certain proportion of new builds have to be put aside for 'social housing' so be on the look out for applications. Some estate agents also sell on shared ownership properties so check with these and ask to be notified if anything comes up. Some ideas of where to look - happy hunting.

i was looking at an estate agents who had a flat up for sale at 50% shared owership... can anyone give me more information as to what it is all about and if its worth it??
they were asking for 58k can this price be negoiated?
Can anyone buy this property?
Do i need to pay rent etc...

Conners, we live in the North West and bought a shared ownership house from Manchester Methodist Housing. I know they do alot of shared ownership schemes so they are worth contacting. I think their website is www.mmhg.org.uk but they also go under the Plumlife name, so if the address I've given doesn't work, try doing a Google search for either MMHG or Plumlife.

Joesan, I'd ring up the estate agents and find out whether the 58k was for the 50% share or for the whole property. If it is for the whole property you'd find a mortgage for 29k and rent the other half until you could afford to buy another share (usually in 25% increments). If the 58k was for 50%, you would have to find a mortgage for that amount and then pay rent on the other half. Once you have bought the property, if you ever get to a point where you could afford to increase your mortgage, you can then buy another share of the property (this is what they refer to as staircasing). Say you wanted to buy another 25% you would pay the 25% of the current market value of the property, this obviously could be different to what a 25% share would have cost you at the time you purchased the property. Anyone can buy the property if it is being sold by a private vendor. If the property is being sold by a Housing Association they may be looking for the purchaser to be someone on a limited income who would maybe struggle to find a reasonable property for the money they had available. Hope you are following all this - can get a bit mind-boggling!!
We bought a shared-ownership house 5 years ago now, and for us it was the only way that we could get a foot on the ladder. If you ring the estate agent they will be able to answer any questions you have.
Let me know how you get on.

dont know if i really understood. so you pay mortgage on half and rent on half. rent presumably decided by the housing association?

would you not find your outgoings are roughly similar to paying 100% of mortgage?

or is the point that it helps people who cant get 100% of mortgage because dont earn enough.

sorry if im being dim..... :confused:


DC

Yep, the outgoings are very similar to if you had a mortgage for the whole house. Unfortunately, mortgages are decided on your income rather than how much you can afford to pay out each month - stupid but thats the system. At the time we bought our house 100% mortgages were rare. As my husband was on a fairly low income and I wasn't working we could only get a mortgage for 24,000. That would only allow us to buy a maisonette over a shop, and as we had a baby on the way it wouldn't have been suitable. The shared ownership scheme meant that we could buy a newly built property (which has now doubled its value!!) and in a couple of years when the kids are at school and I start working, we will be able to buy the rest.

Don't worry you're not being dim, It can get very confusing and the schemes vary. There are still things I don't understand I just pick bits up as I need to.

Hope that has helped a bit!

yeh that is fantastic. thank you

makes a bit of sense. thinking about it im sure someone at work has talked about this. might ask him what his deal is.

didnt i hear somewhere that more mortgage providers are turning to offering mortagges based on ability to pay as opposed to salary multipliers? an urban myth? did i dream it? or are they still just a minority?



do you tend to find the rent is pitched roughly the same a regular landlord would or reduced a little for the scheme? or does it depend?

sorry for all the questions ... but its really caught my interest.

DC

The mortgage you are talking about is called a "self-certificated" mortgage. I think they are fairly new and are based on, like you said, what you can prove that you would be able to afford each month. Obviously it helps if you can show, like in our situation, that the amount you pay in rent and mortgage, would be similar to to the amount you would pay for the whole mortgage. I think they were set up for the self-employed, but can be used for these sort of situations.

The rent for our scheme is reduced. We pay £140 per month in rent for the 50% we don't own. It is a 3 bedroomed new build, so you'd obviously expect to pay more than £280 for it if you were just renting it alone. I think it depends though on the scheme you're with. These houses that we are in were purposely built to provide decent properties for people who would otherwise struggle, so the rent is pitched accordingly. For us it was a lifeline and I guess that will be the same for alot of people.

interesting. ill certainly look into it

anya you are a gem thank you so much

Be very careful about "self-certified" mortgages. They don't look at affordability at all. They simply ask you for your income and you're certifying that figure yourself without having to show any proofs to the mortgage lender. They're meant to be used by self-employed people who don't have books, accounts, etc. but have been used by desperate buyers who want to get on the property ladder at all costs. If you lie about your income on a self-cert application, you're committing fraud.

Remember to factor in other costs. Although you would be part renting and part buying you would be responsible for the full cost of maintaining the property, the HA would not be liable to do anything.

A shared ownership scheme is a good way to get started for those who may have trouble buying a house outright. My partner & I bought 40% of a house 2 years ago in oxfordshire. However due to house price rises, and how much we have paid off on the mortgage we have 20k on paper. If we had stayed where we were...we would have been down 12k in rent. Our housing association pays for the buildings insurance...but of course they get us to pay for it through the rent. Our rent increases each year and has done so twice now by about 5 pounds a time.

One thing that will assist you in getting a shared ownership house is to be on the council housing list. In our case they had to ensure that initially at least all purchasers were on the list. We never stood a chance of getting a council house, but hey that wasn't the point. If we hadn't been on this list we would never have got the house we have now.