Intermediate housing

We need private rent controls more than shared ownership etc. The vast majority are struggling to pay their rent which keep increasing. Ownership is a very distant whisper of a dream for most of us. Rent caps, rent controlled housing etc is what is desperately needed. Something like how Berlin controls rent would be amazing. Helping people to buy houses especially in a post covid 19 London with lots of people barely getting by is what we need now. 

London Living Rent and Intermediate rent is more a priority than shared ownership. But more important is putting some controls/caps in place for outrageous rent and insane house prices. This is why intermediate rent, london living rent, shared ownership is needed and its shocking that this is the case. 

Agree with others here, London Living Rent and intermediate rent (for all working Londoners) should be prioritised over shared ownership. Nothing will improve until rent becomes more reasonable and working professionals can save a portion of their income. 

Affordable rent should be the overwhelming priority in my opinion.  

In terms of ownership, generally speaking, it needs to be easier for people to buy a first home and more difficult to buy an additional home.

More intermediate housing is not what is needed in my opinion. 

We need housing price controls and private rent controls. The price of housing is out of control on London. People need to be in a couple and earning so much much money to be able to own a house! No one can save while renting. 

Also more social housing should be built for those really struggling. 

Some form of rent control is needed in London - this should be prioritised in the strategy. Rent, including all the associated fees, has been the biggest barrier to people being able to save any form of deposit to buy a London property. Current rents also make the £90,000 household income cap on the schemes seem unnecessarily stringent. A small family renting in London doesn't see much of that after rent, childcare and commuter costs.

Ajcrawly's comment, below, perfectly captures everything else I would've said.

Completely agree with comment below. Raise income in London the prices are stupid compared to what people earn. 

London rent vs London wages do not match up this is the main problem! If you are working a job with no qualifications then you cannot live by yourself which isn't bad for teenagers but people in their 30s are now housesharing on incomes up to 30k as they cannot afford to rent on their own, let alone buy. Shared ownership only really works outside london as the mortgage and rent together sometimes works out better than renting or buying, and gives you the option to staircase. 

II do not like the idea of SO. It is too complicated if one party wants to leave. A rent cap would be better,  and be for straightforward  tenancies. The government's help so far seems to favour the middle classes..Because of that, I speak about rentals only.. Rents should be capped.so occupants have the chance to save.

Only residents who have lived in London for five years (not necessarily in the same London Borough) should qualify and remain in the same type of job or similar as was declared at the outset. Thus a ceiling of earnings has to come into it.

Single workers should be considered for a change. By and large they could never qualify for any other benefits.

There should be no subletting whatsoever or else the tenancy is null and void...The rental should be an applicant's only home.

Borough councils should be made to stop selling public housing -  no right to buy or else the housing list can never reduce.So many ex local authority flats are bought by investors who let at market rents. What have councils been doing all these years? We had a Labour government for 13 years!  There should have been regulations from the start - i.e. the property must be offered back to the respective councils.at a nominal price..

Buy to let should not be possible/ It has skewed the rental market, Land values are calculated on investment rentals.

London is in a mess because land prices keep going up with whatever  return investors can get on rentals..

Housing Associations are not what they were - I wish the HAs could go back to what they were/

.I thought the conversion of vacant office blocks to housing was now allowed? 

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I'm glad I was able to get in this forum and read more about shared ownership. They definitely shed some light on the matter. The problem is affordability. Property price Vs the salary that we get here in London. The cost of living here is quite high. But our pay is not as competitive as it should be. There is London weighting allowance that could hardly cover the cost of commuting. I think our salaries are disproportionate with the rent here in London. Increase the salary for nurses and other keyworkers and regulate the rental fees. Landlords can increase the rent every time the tenancy has to be renewed which is quite unfair at times especially when there was nothing done to improve the property or repairs have been made but it wasn't the tenant's fault. I hope rent increases should be stopped especially during this time as a lot of households are already struggling financially.

How about rent to own scheme? Is there such a thing? Small amount of deposit needed and then the tenants will rent the property at a fixed price and the rent that they pay will be used to pay for the property itself like a mortgage? It's like renting but you know that the money you're spending is going somewhere. 

Some suggestions:

- Shared ownership houses (in London, at least) seem to be luxury 1-3 bed flats with no outdoor space, and often only one bathroom. Where are the 'intermediate' options for young families, rather than affluent twenty year olds on high-paying grad schemes? 

- The rental market needs urgent reform. I see Sadiq Khan proposed a rent-freeze - this ought to be implemented immediately, as well as a rent cap (perhaps by borough). Eliminate studio flats and put in fair guidelines around the amount of space that can be sold as living space - stop landlords from selling, say, "3 bed flat, no lounge" for £2k a month in which people are stuck in box rooms with no outdoor space and often no natural light. Londoners pay on average 50% or more of their paycheck on rent - this is one of the reason that they're not able to get on the property ladder in the first place. 

- Put caps on how many houses people are allowed to own, let alone rent out, and stop buy-to-let mortgages entirely. Stop foreign landlords from buying out luxury flats and renting them out at extortionate prices. For that matter, stop allowing property developers to build nothing but luxury 2 bed flats on the river! Where are the provisions for family accomodation? Good quality social housing would be vastly preferable to spending £100k to buy 15% of a luxury 3 bed flat in Brixton, or anything else Notting Hill Genesis are selling.

- I believe that the rental market needs a far more urgent review than shared ownership - that said, there needs to be attention paid to the service charges & admin fees, currently uncapped, as well as the punitive clauses keeping from people from, say, painting a wall without risking eviction! It's patently absurd, and needs regulation. 

- To your question - what would make me recommend intermediate housing to friends/family? Security, stability, longevity. None of which it currently offers.

Pls see the National Leasehold Campaign and Leasehold Knowledge Partnerships new brochure called 'What is Shared Ownership? - written by leaseholders who learnt the hard way'

It is designed to inform buyers and existing SO tenants what SO is all about. Sales people do not tell consumers what they should know. It's very misleading and dangerous especially the marketing material used by HAs to entice victims to buy. SO properties should be rented-period, until a suitably reformed model for SO can be looked at. The CMA recently stated that developers of new build leasehold houses appear to have mislead consumers and there will be enforcement action. The same will happen to SO HAs in time. It is not ethical to sell these now knowing that 90% of new builds are estimated to be defective via EWS1 and building safety regs. Therefore defective properties should cease selling now, otherwise its clear that HAs are setting up new buyers to be victims - paying for 100% of the costly remediation works. Sellers are not even being transparent about this. STOP THIS NOW before ruining thousands of lives. 

I am a shared owner and it is the worst decision I have ever made. Service charge has increased 400% from just under £1000 to over £4500. Then came the cladding crisis. Costs now running at £6500 per year + Cladding costs of £30000, possibly a lot more + further costs for other fire safety defects. Life ruining. A lot of the comments below already sum it up.The gross economic inequality in this country is what needs to be addressed. 

I bought a Shared Ownership flat in 2006. This means that I had to get a mortgage to get a tenancy that is less secure than the one my grandmother had on the council house she brought my father up in. This is not progress, and the scheme must be reformed from the ground up, backdated to cover all existing shared ownership properties as well and any new ones that are built. And please - not by the Tories. They've made enough of a mess of housing as it is. 

Shared Ownership is a terrible tenure. Please focus on London rents until it is improved - something that can only come from national govt.. Please note - The latest proposals from the govt will make it worse, not better. 

To improve SO, make it actual ownership, so that the tenant has an equity share that the landlord must buy back at market rates if the tenant is ever evicted. Also, make it shared, so that the cost of maintaining the property is split between landlord and tenant according to the % split of the equity. Lease extension should be free for the tenant and statutory lease extension should be extended to cover SO. And for the love of god will someone please regulate Housing Associations. They are venal, self-interested, profiteering bullies at the moment and should be put on a very short lease as soon as possible.  

For now, keep an eye on mis-selling, which is routine when it comes to SO. Housing Associations are conning people into buying shared ownership. They lie about it being ownership, when it is just an assured tenancy for the duration of the lease. They lie by omission because they never mention lease extension. They lie about the affordability of service charge. They lie constantly, and with impunity.  

Quote;

Roads are made, streets are made, services are improved, electric light turns night into day, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains -- and all the while the landlord sits still. Every one of those improvements is effected by the labour and cost of other people and the taxpayers. To not one of those improvements does the land monopolist, as a land monopolist, contribute, and yet by every one of them the value of his land is enhanced. He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare, he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived.

While the land is what is called "ripening" for the unearned increment of its owner, the merchant going to his office and the artisan going to his work must detour or pay a fare to avoid it. The people lose their chance of using the land, the city and state lose the taxes which would have accrued if the natural development had taken place, and all the while the land monopolist only has to sit still and watch complacently his property multiplying in value, sometimes many fold, without either effort or contribution on his part!

Part Quote; Winston Churchill 1909 as liberal in Parliament.  

This is far bigger than just shared ownership!

"Buy land they don't make it anymore" - Mark Twain.

Please scrap the requirements to live or work in the borough where the shared ownership housing is located. It is wholly arbitrary and can be deeply unfair e.g. I live on the wrong side of the road and can't buy a shared ownership property on the opposite side of the road because it is in a different borough.