Right to Buy and Shared Ownership enquiries on the increase

Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen a marked increase in enquiries for both Right to Buy properties and those looking to purchase on a Shared Ownership basis.

Right to Buys are usually via the local council selling their properties to the existing tenant at a discounted price.  This discount can be up to £75k and tenants must have been with the council for five years or more.  Some lenders will allow borrowing of up to 100% and possibly slightly more if the extra funds are to be used purely for home improvements.  If you resell your home within five years you will usually have to repay some or all of the discount you received, however remortgaging is usually allowed in this time period.

Shared Ownership Schemes are provided through housing associations.  You buy a share of your home, between 25% and 75% of the property value, and pay rent on the remaining share to the housing association.  You usually have the opportunity to purchase a bigger share of the property later on (normally called ‘staircasing’).  Local housing associations must confirm your eligibility in order to join these types of schemes.

Both schemes are proving popular in the local area and a wide number of lenders are looking to lend in both scenarios and to a number of different customer types, so always seek advice.

Whilst mentioning advice, there are a lot of good rates in the market currently.  Some of these are only accessible through certain brokers.  Make sure you are speaking to someone who has access to the Whole of Market and access to these superb rates as they can be withdrawn with little or no notice.  With this in mind and as mentioned in a previous write up, some lenders will launch market leading products but only for a short period, in order to attract volume business.  The latest to do this is Accord mortgages (owned by Yorkshire Bank).  Sadly by the time this goes to print, this particular set of fantastic products will be gone as they were only available for 7 days, so I will not go in to detail, but they were good and there are likely to be more soon.  Remember, despite what some say, you do not have to take your mortgage with any one source even if they insist that is the deal.  Shop around and make sure you are getting the right deal for number one!