Shared Ownership

You can’t buy any home via a shared ownership scheme. It has to be built with that intention. OX Place is committed to creating beautiful, sustainable homes for the people of Oxford and we’ve created a range of shared ownership homes – from city centre apartments to bigger homes more suitable for families – in a range of areas. You can also buy a shared ownership home from the existing owner – known as a resale.

Check out our fabulous range of properties for sale here.

Not unless you’d like to! Shared Ownership actually means you’re buying a share of your home, rather than all of it at once.

You rent the remaining share from Oxford City Council. There is no sharing with another person, unless of course you want to.

Shared ownership is a great way to get on the housing ladder if you’re buying alone or with another person.

Once you’ve bought your home, Oxford City Council will become your landlord. OX Place is a trading name of Oxford City Housing Ltd. which was set up by Oxford City Council to develop and sell shared ownership homes.

People who work in the armed forces have priority.

We make sure that you won’t be spending more than 45% of your household income on housing costs.

To be eligible for shared ownership, you must:

• Be at least 18 years old.
• Have an annual household income of less than £80,000.
• Be in the process of selling your existing home if you have one.
• Be unable to afford to buy a home suitable for your housing needs on the open market.
• Not be in mortgage or rent arrears.
• Have a good credit history and can afford the regular payments and costs involved in buying a home.
• Have savings or be able to easily access the fees associated with buying a home – usually around £4,000.
• Have a deposit of 5-10% of the equity share you’re buying.

This will depend on the terms of your lease – remember with Shared Ownership you’re still renting part of your home.

Broadly speaking, if you live in a Shared Ownership house you can have pets. But if you live in a Shared Ownership apartment, the rules may well be different.

Check with us when looking at the different types of Shared Ownership homes OX Place has available.

It’s much the same as buying any other property – you’ll need a solicitor to do the paperwork and you’ll need to calculate your deposit and money for moving costs. Then you’ll need to be able to afford to pay the mortgage, rent and service charges if they apply – which will always be less than privately renting a like-for-like home.

Use our Shared Ownership Calculator to get an idea of what your monthly costs could look like when buying through shared ownership.

You’ll currently need at least a 5% deposit to buy a shared ownership home. But that deposit is calculated based on the share you’re buying, not the full market value of the property.

You’ll also need savings to cover the initial purchase costs such as the mortgage and solicitor fees; this is normally around £4,000, but can change depending on who you use.

To reserve your chosen home, you’ll also need to pay a reservation fee. This will secure the home as yours until a formal offer is made, and will usually be between £250 and £500. This cost will be deducted from the total purchase price when your sale completes.

As a first-time buyer you won’t have to pay any stamp duty on your home as long as its total value is less than £300,000. If your home is worth more than £300,000 you will pay a 5% stamp duty tax on any amount over this value – not on the total value.

If you’ve owned a property before, you’ll pay Stamp Duty on the value of your property above £125,000.

Paying Stamp Duty is slightly different for shared ownership homes as you get some options about when to pay it. Usually Stamp Duty must be paid when you complete the purchase of your home. But with shared ownership you get the option to either pay the whole amount at the start, or once you own a share worth £125,000 or more. This allows you to spread the cost of paying Stamp Duty if that’s what’s best for you.

Get advice from a mortgage advisor to see how much you could borrow, what deposit you’ll need and what your interest rate will be. Make sure they know you’re considering a shared ownership home. They’ll need to understand your financial position – your household income, any debts you already have such as loans or credit cards, as well as the money you need to pay out every month, including things like child maintenance payments for example.

They’ll use this information plus insight into your credit score to find the right lender(s) for you. How much money you have in savings to put towards your deposit will also influence the percentage share you can buy.

This will depend on the value of the home you buy, the share you purchase and the rent you’ll need to pay on the remaining share along with any service charges in apartment blocks. But here at OX Place we’ve committed that it will always be cheaper to live in a shared ownership home than an equivalent one you rent privately.

Use our Shared Ownership Calculator to get an idea of what your monthly costs could look like when buying through shared ownership.

Don’t forget you’ll also need to be able to pay all the other monthly costs such as council tax, utility bills and home insurance.

You can’t usually use child maintenance payments income towards monthly costs; however it could be possible to use some other payments and benefits towards the rent on your remaining unpurchased share.

For example, if you can buy the share ‘outright’ with a cash lump sum, you may be able to use Housing Benefit towards or to cover the costs of the rent on the share of the home you don’t own. Speak to Oxford City Council, the landlord for OX Place shared ownership homes, and/or an independent mortgage advisor for full details before applying for shared ownership.

A history of missed payments or bad credit is likely to have an impact on whether you can borrow money for a mortgage. This doesn’t mean you don’t automatically qualify for shared ownership but could mean you can’t raise the money you need to buy a share.

A financial or mortgage advisor will be able to provide some advice, or you can check your own credit score online before applying, often for free.