Shared Ownership schemes..Would you ?..Have you ?

Yes initially it was good we could manage the mortgage, Rent and maintenance charge. But we face an extra bill of £2,489 on top of the normal maintenance charge we pay monthly. Its due to increased costs of the lighting in our block of flats. In looking deeper we discovered we needed to register to check our maintenance account . There we discovered an extra £200.00 also added onto our bill which came as a shock. We are expected to absorb this extra expense. We also know we have to pay for new fire compliant front doors when they are fitted at whatever cost the landlords decide on top of the £2.600. People talk about shared ownership as just a mortgage and rent - its the extras on the maintenance that the housing associations/landlords can add on due to the conditions in the lease you have to sign. These may cost you your home.

That’s the difference between buying a leasehold property and a freehold one, shared ownership or not. I have never owned, and will never own, a leasehold property. The service charges on my son’s London flat are very steep, as he knew would be the case when he bought it. There is always something which needs to be done but at least the developer has replaced the suspect cladding at its own cost.

SewnSew

"but then landlords are not exactly renowned for efficient and speedy fixing of any issues, are they?" Witzend, that's a bit unfair. I have a number of houses and attend to problems within 24 hours if at all possible, certainly within a week. Not all landlords are remiss.

A bit late to reply, Sewnsew, but yes, it’s perfectly true that not all landlords are remiss. I am one who certainly isn’t, but I’m afraid too many of them are.

In addition there are plenty of nightmare tenants around, and now regulations seem to be skewed in their favour, landlords lumbered with these now have fewer ways of reclaiming their property.

Obviously of course there are good and bad on both sides but there still needs to be robust legislation in place to assist landlords.

Where would renters be if private landlords like us ( albeit on a very small scale) felt that there were too many obstacles in the way to evict problem tenants and decided en- masse to sell up?
Some already have which means there are now too many people chasing too few properties.

There have been lots of scare stories about this in the Times . Sorry I cannot tell you more but their financial advisor was really against older eople doing this .