KEVIN and Julie Elliott got a £66,700 discount on their first home – and they didn’t need to put down a deposit either.
Buying your first home is an expensive business, and many people often feel that getting a foot on the property ladder simply isn’t possible.
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But there are government schemes to help savers desperate for a place of their own.
Kevin 42, and his wife Julie, 40, used the Right to Buy scheme to buy their four-bedroom council house in West Boldon, Tyne and Wear.
It’s a government initiative that lets council house tenants buy the property they rent.
These homes are offered at a reduced price to help renters get on the ladder.
Kevin and Julie ended up paying £65,300 for their council house – even though its market value stands at £132,000.
This was a discount of 52% and it knocked £66,700 off the property’s value.
Using the scheme let them bag their home much quicker than they thought – as they didn’t need to put down a deposit
The maximum discount you can get off depends on how long you’ve been in your council house.
You get a 35% discount on your council home if you’ve been a public sector tenant for between three to five years.
After five years, the discount increases by 1% for each extra year you’ve been a public sector tenant.
However, the maximum it can increase to is 70%, or £87,200 across England and £116,200 in London boroughs.
As long as you have been a public sector tenant, you will be able to get the discount.
However, you’ll have to pay back some or all of the discount if you sell within five years, according to the Homeowners Alliance.
If you sell your home within 10 years of buying it through Right to Buy, you must also first give your old landlord or another social landlord in the area eight weeks to buy it.
Kevin, a transport manager, and Julie, a construction worker, finally secured their first home in January.
We sat down with Kevin to chat through how he went from renter to homeowner for The Sun’s My First Home series.
Tell me about your house
It’s a three-bedroom semi-detached house in West Boldon, Tyne and Wear.
We have a lovely, big south-facing garden which is perfect for our dogs Jett and Shadow.
There’s a separate kitchen and living room downstairs and a handy cloakroom.
Upstairs, we have one master bedroom and two other bedrooms along with a bathroom.
The house is facing a big green area and we’re not overlooked by neighbours which makes it feel very private.
We also have plans to renovate the property in the next two years.
We are going to start by replacing the existing kitchen doors with French doors to expand on the space available, and create a dining area by installing new appliances.
How did you decide on location?
We were previously living on a council estate in South Shields and we were keen to move to a different location.
Eventually, we were offered the home we are in now and we took it without even viewing it.
The house is in a great location for work and it’s a really nice, friendly area.
How much did you pay for it?
The house was valued at £132,000 but we got a 52% discount and bought it for £65,300.
You get a 35% discount off your house if you’ve lived there for three to five years.
After five years, you get an extra 1% discount for every extra year you’ve been a tenant.
My wife had been living in a council home for 20 years meaning we got 52% off the value of the house – a reduction of £66,700.
We moved into the home we are in now in January 2020 but we were still able to make the most of the discount because we had been long-standing council tenants.
We took out a mortgage of £65,300 for the house, and we didn’t have to pay a deposit – that’s because many lenders don’t require one for a Right to Buy purchase.
The mortgage term is 25 years at a five-year fixed rate of 8.75%.
The monthly mortgage repayments work out at around £500 a month.
How did you save for it?
Because we didn’t need to save up for a deposit, we didn’t need to put too much aside to cover the costs of buying the house.
We were comfortably putting away around £100 a month each for around a year starting in 2021 to cover the costs of solicitors fees.
Because we had already lived in the house for three years, we also didn’t need to worry about furnishing the house.
Were there any complications?
Covid hit us quite hard.
My wife and I previously owned and ran our own cleaning company and were the main providers for a major homebuilder in the Northeast of England.
But with people’s finances no new homes were being built, meaning very little business was coming in.
We previously wanted to buy our home but found all our finances were tied up with subsidising our company, so we couldn’t move forward with our purchase.
During the pandemic, we ended up closing the business after six years, which was pretty devastating.
Luckily I had always had a second job as a transport manager so I took this on full-time and Julie got a job as a construction worker.
This cushioned the financial blow and meant we were able to make our home-buying dreams a reality just over two years later.
What advice would you give to other first-time buyers?
We had a few strokes of bad luck before bagging our first home, but we are in no way bitter about how things turned out.
Just be patient and keep going – it can be a long process, but it’s worth it.
Here’s how one couple got £11,000 off their deposit for their £217,000 first home.
Another family is saving thousands on their £385,500 first home with a simple mortgage trick.
