Shared Ownership Vs Affordable

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suziesu

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I have been waiting on the affordable housing list with Fingal for over a year and half now. I am looking for something in the blanch/castleknock area as thats where I'm from. Building work in these areas has practically stopped so I cannot see many more in places in the pipeline to come up on the affordable option.

With Dublin City Council (not fingal) you can choose you own home (including second hand) under the Shared Ownership scheme, is there a restriction on what areas you can buy with Dublin City Council? Could I apply for it even though I live in Fingal?

Is the shared ownership a good route to go down?
 
Hi there, with Shared Ownership there are two restrictions - if you are applying with fingal CC the house you purchase must be in the fingal area. Also you are given a loan amount and the house must be in that region.

We bought SO a few years ago with DCC and I know lots has changed since then, back then you could only get a loan of €177,000 but the house you purchased had to be less than €180,000 - now I know things have definaltly changed since we bought.

The thing I liked about SO is that you could completely buy the council out. The thing I didn't like is that with the money they gave you you are completely limited in price range in that you could only afford to buy in a not so great area...
 
As far as I know, with Dublin City Council the max is now 300,000. With Fingal (where I live) shared ownership is only available on new houses, not like Dublin City Coucil where it can be done on old houses.

But can I buy in the fingal area through Dublin City Council?
 
susiesu,
if you ring dcc they will send u a nice map of all the administrative areas of each council. This will let you know where you can buy under what scheme. You might be able to get something right at the border! good luck.
 
Good idea thanks!

I think they county councils need to review all of their schemes asap. With the way the construction industry is going, building has slowed down which means less units for Affordable housing. They need to allow people to purchase second hand houses/apartments through the affordable scheme becuase there are not enough new places coming on board to meet the demand.
 
I have a problem relating to Dun Laoghaire Rathdown’s share ownership scheme through which I ‘purchased’ a house in 2001. I outline the problem below and wonder if anyone can advise me as to where I should go for advice on this matter.

The redemption value of my house is now €207,942.66, which is €17,442.66 more than it originally cost (£150,000 in 2001, the equivalent of €190,500). This has been unsatisfactorily explained to me by various people in the Dun Laoghaire Rathdown county council in terms of recent CPI fluctuations. Regardless of this explanation, which I only partially understand, the upshot for me is that at the end of my 25 year share ownership mortgage (in 2026) I will owe a lot more for my house than I originally borrowed due to the fact that the county council’s rental equity (60%) is continuously rising and negating the mortgage portion of the scheme. To put it simply I have paid the county council more than €69,000 over the last seven years and yet I now owe them more than I originally borrowed. How much worse will the situation be after another eighteen years?

There may be financial logic to this but when I purchased my house it was advertised as a scheme which would help people, like myself, who had no other way of purchasing a home. I can now only see it as at best an unfair and flawed scheme and at worst taking advantage of financially vulnerable people, desperate to provide a home for their family. When I purchased my home through the share ownership scheme I was a single mother of a four year old and had just been given notice in the flat I was renting. I was on the housing list but it was made clear to me that I would be waiting for a very long time. I was desperate but not stupid: if it had been explained to me that the county council’s rental equity might rise to the extent that it might become impossible for me to ever own my home, or even that 40% portion of it which I was led to believe I was paying off as a normal mortgage, I would certainly have made a different choice. If I were dealing with a private financial institution I feel I would have legal recourse on the basis of having been sold an inappropriate financial scheme.

I did understand that the county council’s share would have to be paid off eventually but shareholder home owners are given an option to buy out a portion of the county council’s share each year and it was not made to seem urgent. My own approach had been that when my son was no longer dependent I would have more income to use for this purpose. I realize my mistake now but again the consequences of not doing so early and with large sums was not explained. The scheme is means-tested. When I applied for the scheme, I only qualified because I was earning less than £25,000 per year. A person earning such an income is hardly likely to have much extra income after paying more than £700 per month in mortgage to the county council. I find it hard to believe that the county council thought it likely that these extra sums on top of the mortgage would be forthcoming in the early stages of the loan period.

If the value of the county council’s rental equity continues to rise, as presumably it will, then at the end of the term of 25 years I will owe the county council to the extent that I will have to sell my home just before I enter into retirement.

I only discovered this situation when I rang the county council for the redemption figure. There must be quite a few other people in the share ownership scheme who have no idea of the situation and may not discover it for several years. Surely the county council should at least have contacted its customers and outlined the changed situation thus giving them the option to buy out of the scheme before it is too late.

I am unsure who to turn to for advice on this matter, but my own anger, and fear for other people in this situation obliges me to do something. Is there anything that can be done in terms of advice or publicity for the benefit of others who either have a share ownership loan or who are considering taking one out? Should I make a complaint to the financial regulator or the financial ombudsman?

 
That sounds like a terrible situation, you should send your above comments to your local county coucillor or representative and also send it into a newspaper where they might investigate it further.

Who knows the local coucils might take notice and look at changing the scheme.

Good luck!
 
Get out of the scheme NOW!! I doubt the councils will take notice or change the schemes - they are making too much money out of decent working people like you and me. The scheme is a rip off. Its supposed to be helping people on lower incomes who can't afford a regular mortgage, but in both the short and long term in works out more expensive. I did the SO scheme 3 years ago, got a nice one bed which i am very happy with. The council's share continues to rise in line with inflation. Up until recently this wasn't a major problem, however now with high inflation and falling house prices, it creates a serious problem as their porportion increases even as the price falls.

I managed to buy mine out after 2 years, after hounding them for a year. I only got any action when i sent a letter to the City Manager's office. The other council lads i spoke to didn't give a dam. When i changed to a normal mortgage my monthly payments dropped about 150/month, which is nice. Plus its going into the mortgage and reducing the loan, rather than into rent as dead money. I was left fairly sickened by the whole affair - I could've just gone on a housing list and been a sponger but I chose to pay my way and got zero help from the council.
 
Yes, I was in the shared ownership scheme for 3years and like that I realised that my loan wasn't decreasing much so I bought out the rented equity with a remortgage and now the mortgage is decreasing the loan. People should be encouraged to remortgage within 3 years otherwise they will never clear the loan as the rented equity increases to cancell out the repayments.
 
I note the email re. Shared Ownership Scheme with Dun Laoghaire Council. It is clear from all the documentation with all councils the implications of taking a higher than 40% (minimum) rented equity stake with the council.

I am confident that Dun Laoghaire would be no different and am concerned by the poster's attempts to advise the forum that she was not fully aware! The answer is very simple- remortgage... Shared Ownership is only a temporary stepping stone.
 
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