Preferred Mortgages

Two years ago we were in the unfortunate position of not being able to afford a house. The mortgages were too high for us to be able to get on the property ladder. We were first time buyers and not earning a great deal of money! Anyway one day we were reading something in our local paper regarding part ownership on properties that they were building locally. Not knowing anything about part ownership, I phoned the local council who were running the scheme. They explained it all to me, so here goes!

*PART OWNERSHIP SCHEME*

You can buy a share from them and pay a low rent for the other share. As your situation improves you can buy more shares until you own the whole home. When a shared owner wants to sell, you have to go back to them to find a buyer for your home, so there is also a chance to get a resale property. Some of their developments are reserved for 'Keyworkers' such as Health and Education staff. Local Authorities generally have the first options in nominating purchasers for 'New Build' developments and hold their own waiting lists. To be able to purchase on the part ownership scheme you have to be on the council housing list. You can just put you name down and then you are free to apply for part ownership/keyworker schemes.

We went through the council and we were nominated to a Housing Association who were building new properties in our are on the scheme. Everything went very quickly and all we had to do was to provide a "mortgage in principle" to the housing association to show that we could obtain a mortgage. We got this of Preferred Mortgages, who were very willing to help us. Mortgages are very hard to complete at the best of times, but part ownership is even more difficult, as you you will see below.
We seemed to hit every problem imaginable!

*MORTGAGE*

The rates are variable, well that is what we are on anyway, ie if interest rate goes up, mortgage rate goes up. Obviously all persons are diferent, it would be impossible to state different interest rates because individual rates would have to be calculated. There rates start from 5.10%.

Fees
£495.00 payable on completition.

We have never been squeaky clean with our credit history, as something always seems to come up and need to be paid and we end up missing something to pay the other. Before I met my husband i was left with 2 children by my ex, and consequently incurred a few CCj's as i was unable to meet the payments due to him leaving with me nothing. This was a problem as we had to look beyond High Street Lenders as they would not be able to help us with CCJ'S. We were loking on the internet and came across a broker who was recommending companies who could help in our situation. We phoned them and eventually were told it would be Preferred Mortgages, who said they could help people with CCJ's. We completed a form on the internet and they sent a reply back almost immediately saying they could help us.

Approximately a week later they sent us a application pack out which we had to fill out and send back with wage slips, bank statements etc. My husband worked full time and i worked part time so we were struggling to look like we earnt enough money to get the mortgage we wanted. We did not have a deposit so we were looking for the full mortgage. The house was up for £125,000, so we needed £62,500 mortgage. Everything seemed to go on ok for a while. We then hit problem Number 1.

PROBLEM NO 1:

We were slightly down on our money, by about £2000.00. They needed to raise the money before they could realease a mortgage to us. Our solicitor offered to be guarantor for this amount, but as it was they decided that they would give us the mortgage without the guanteed money. That was great of them but it took them around 2 weeks to agree to this. More time wasted and more time Housing Association pressuring us for the deal to be done!

PROBLEM NO 2:

As i previously mentioned i had a couple of CCJ'S from 4 years before. Anyway, there was one that they were not happy with as it had not been satisifed. They needed to know what it was before proceeding, it was not going to be a problem that i owed them money they just wanted to confirm what it was and how much for. They advised me to contact Experian, which i did. HOWEVER, as i was staying at my parents address temporarly, experian would not send my credit file to a temporary address. It has to be permanent, so i had no way of tracing this CCJ and what it was for. To cut a long story short they agreed to let it go but again this took another couple of weeks and a lot of stress!

The Housing Association were starting to get impatient at this point and were telling us that we had 2 weeks or they would pass the deal onto someone else.

Anyway, it finally went through and we moved into our new house. It was lovely to finally call somewhere home.

In all we found Preferred Mortgages great to deal with. Their staff have always been great on the phone and they do everything to help you. Obviously we had some problems but in the end managed to get sorted out. It is great for people who are not squeaky clean in credit terms, or if like me problems in the past that have affected me going to "normal" lenders.

They are fully regulated by the Financial Services Authority for the provison of regulated mortgage products and regulated general insurance products.

I have covered on Part Ownership Scheme here as well as it was all part of us getting our first Mortgage.

Hope this has helped some of you out there!

xxx