Hannah – Shared Ownership buyer in Greenwich

Shared Ownership success story in London

With deposit amounts seemingly ever-growing, many first time buyers have given up hope of ever owning their own home. However, alternative home-buying schemes are on the increase to help potential purchasers take those first steps towards homeownership. Hannah took the plunge and, with the help of Share to Buy, is now happily settled in her own Shared Ownership home in North Greenwich.

“I must have moved around London five or six times, sharing with way too many people; the rent was more than I wanted to pay because I was living in shared properties where I didn’t really have my own space and they were often very cramped… I just considered owning my own home completely unfeasible so I didn’t bother to work towards it at all.”

In an attempt to weigh up her options, Hannah signed up to the Share to Buy portal: “I signed up to the website and created a profile where I set the area I wanted to buy in and the kind of properties I was looking for… the deposit for buying a Shared Ownership property was much lower than I was expecting – in total I had to save around £17,000!”

Hannah purchased a 32% share of her own one bedroom apartment in Moat Homes’ Greenwich Millennium Village two years ago. On her future, she continues: “I do see myself being here a long time; I actually just fixed my mortgage rate for the next 10 years so that’s a big commitment. With staircasing, I could buy more shares in the property, eventually amounting to 100%. At that point the flat would fully be mine and I wouldn’t have to pay any rent!”

Shared Ownership helped Hannah get a foot on the London property ladder, and she believes that others could benefit from the scheme too: “My advice for first time buyers would be to sign up to the Share to Buy website to find the kind of property that you’d be looking to buy. Find out what kind of deposit you’d need and then look at your money to seen how you would achieve that… there’s definitely no way that I would have been able to buy a property without the Shared Ownership scheme. It’s made it affordable to me at this time.”