|  | My partner and I moved into our Shared Ownership home in Milton Keynes last October.
We'd rented previously for around 18 months and were becoming more and more frustrated at the amount of money we were throwing away on rent and having nothing to show for it at the end.
We looked into buying a property in Milton Keynes and even with my partners fantastic salary, we were unable to find anything in our price range which wouldn't have meant we'd be strapped for cash every month after paying for the mortgage.
We were lucky enough to discover a small advert in the local property pages for new Shared Ownership properties being built not far from the rented house we had.
Shared Ownership allows you to buy a percentage of the house whilst paying a housing association of similar a subsidised rent on the remaining percentage.
We applied thinking it was worth a try. We didn't hold out much hope as we had been on the main Milton Keynes housing association list for a while but were told it'd be at least 2-3 years before anything came up.
Amazed
We were amazed when we received a call from a nice lady in regards to our application for these nice new shiney houses in MK.
They offered us a particular plot number and we said yes immediately. We hadn't even seen the house at that point but knew that if we turned it down, we'd be VERY unlikely to find anything else.
We'd wanted a new house after getting details on several wonderful looking 'second hand' Shared Ownership homes only to find there was a premium slapped on top of the asking price which was usually around £15k upwards.
Where on EARTH were we supposed to find this money? We'd been told that no mortgage lender would add it to your mortgage as they were not in agreement of such a thing going on.
Premiums
We then heard that premiums were to be abolished...hopefully, we had begun looking again only to discover there were still premiums on most of the houses.
Anyhow, as soon as we heard we'd been offered the new property, we began looking for a mortgage and within a week, we'd applied and the wheels were in motion.
This was all back in July of last year, and finally, on October 10th, we were handed the keys!! We'd been to look at the property once beforehand and were really excited.
Thankfully, my parents are local and had been kind enough to put up with us for 'a week at the most' after we'd vacated our rented accommodation.
Unsurprisingly, we discovered we'd been rather hopeful at thinking we'd only be there a week, it ended up being five!
Costly
We all got on well though and it meant we were able to save the money we'd have used for rent to buy things for the house. As we'd been in part furnished rented accommodation we needed all the large appliances which were pretty costly.
Mum and Dad have been great though and we'd have been totally lost without them. My older sister is looking to move up here from Bristol now and is facing a similar problem. Although she and her partner are on a reasonable wage, finding a house is virtually impossible!
They've applied to the same Housing Association that we're with and we all have our fingers crossed for them!
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Have you had problems getting on the property ladder? Have you just got on it? If so, how did you manage it? Do you want to upgrade but will have to move away from the area to do so? Tell us your experiences using the form below. 
| EG, MK | Monday, 09-May-2005 14:32:35 BST | | | If only it were that easy!! Nowadays prospective shared owners have to all be registered with the local council to be eligible for consideration for S/O housing. Applying speculatively to a Housing Association's no longer available - so it's another queue to join (as well as the Housing Association waiting lists, you get to wait on the local Council lists too.. joy!) |
| Louise Whapham, Poole, Dorset | Saturday, 01-Jan-2005 13:30:42 GMT | | | We relocated to Poole from Milton Keynes 2 years ago and now want to return, as long term housing for us is impossible to find. The waiting list for the council is up to 10 years here and to even be considered for any housing associations, you have to have a dire need for housing, ie, you are unable to rent privately. Private rents are extortionate and even though my husband is a key worker on a low salary, it has not been easy to find accomodation with little or no help from the local authorities here. We would love to come back and have a home we know we can stay in long term and the shared ownership schemes seem a very good idea, there are hardly any s/o schemes in Poole to speak of. If there is any advice anyone can offer on these or other schemes for us to be able to buy or even rent indefinitely, I would be extremely grateful |
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