A Step by Step Guide to Buying Your Keep Home

Introduction

In the current housing climate of high property prices, an endlessly spiking cost of living, a lack of housing, and mortgage lending limits, buying a home might seem like a painfully distant dream.

But affordable housing – specifically the Keep Homes take on affordable housing – is a radical new sustainable affordable home ownership solution that helps you get onto the housing ladder.

Read all about us and our own innovative and unique low cost home ownership called Your Keep Home.

Your Keep Home

If you’ve come across shared ownership before you will understand why we have deep reservations about the so called “traditional model”. Sometimes also called part buy part rent, you are able to buy a small percentage of your property (usually up to 40%) and then you rent the remainder from a Housing Association (HA) or Registered Provider (RP). You will be referred to as a tenant and your landlord is the HA or RP. We do not think this is home ownership and from all of our research over the past four years we think you agree with us!

At Keep Homes, we like to do things a bit differently, so we’ve created a ground breaking way for you to purchase and truly own your home.

We want you to own as much of your home from day 1 as you can realistically afford together with other notable differences:-

• No rent - We don't charge rent on the portion of the home that we still own - this is your home, you shouldn't feel like a tenant
• Cost share - We will pick up our share of the maintenance/service charge costs. I.e. if you own 60% of your home, you will only pay 60% of the costs - why should you pay for something you don't yet own?
• Route to ownership - We facilitate streamlined and straightforward 'staircasing'
• Price freeze - We even freeze the price of your home meaning you know exactly how much you can 'staircase' without the need for a formal valuation - we want you to fully own your home!

We believe at Keep Homes we can make your dream of owning your own home a reality and we have put together our simple step- by-step guide to assist you with your journey.

The Journey

Step One: Understanding Your Finances

Deposit and Savings - you will need a minimum of 5% of the share you’re buying

Affordability – check you can afford the mortgage speak to one of our experienced advisors or check with an online mortgage calculator

Mortgages – talk to our experienced mortgage broker partners and let them disentangle the jargon and work out how much you can borrow.

Other Costs to Consider - understand all the costs you need to consider, talk to our team of advisors or your solicitor who can help you.

Step Two: Your Professional Team

Mortgage Brokers – select an experienced and renowned broker, we like Coreco or Just Mortgages because they understand what we do!

Solicitors and Conveyancers – select a solicitor or conveyancer, talk to our team and we can recommend a few firms we have worked with and respect.

Step Three: The Right Home for You

Registering Your Interest – compete the simple and easy form on our website and take a look at the up coming developments.

Eligibility Check -we will check your eligibility so we can be sure only households that meet the criteria can apply for a home.

Arrange a Viewing – we will contact you 6-9 months before the property is due to be ready together with regular updates. Viewings can be arranged as soon as the property is launched.

Step Four: Making an Offer

DIP – talk to your broker about arranging a non-binding certificate from your mortgage lender that will say how much they’re willing to lend you and then you are ready to make an offer.

Reserve Your Property – we usually take a holding fee of £500 which is refundable if you cannot go ahead.

Step Five: The Paperwork

Mortgage Application - once your offer is accepted start your mortgage application and the conveyancing process.

Conveyance – let the solicitors do the talking, they will draw up the contract and deal with all the documentation.

Mortgage Approval – carry out a valuation of your property which your lender will need to approve your borrowing.

Exchange – this will happen when your mortgage has been approved and your deposit has been paid. This is the point at which the contract is legally binding.

Even more paperwork! Other niceties you will need to consider will be valuation fees, building insurance, stamp duty, life insurance, mortgage protection insurance.

Step Six: Time to Get Your Keys

Completion Day and Moving In!

Staircasing

If you’ve never heard this term before, staircasing is a process where you as the owner Your Keep Home, purchase further shares of your home from us.

At Keep Homes, we’ve made this as simple as possible, you can purchase as much or a little as you wish dependent upon your circumstances and without the need for formal valuations due to our 'price freeze' system**.

We will simply provide you with a statement setting out what equity has been purchased.

Look out for our next article on a step by step guide to staircasing.