In the first ever episode of "This Shared Ownership Thing" Podcast, Cheryl Gibbens (Marketing Officer) and Gemma Robinson (Senior Marketing Officer) gather round the mic to discuss their top 3 FAQ’s about Shared Ownership, Toby & Sam's Aster Life Story, Buying guide - how to find a mortgage lender and Aster's upcoming Launches. #ThisSOThing
The conversation surrounding shares being purchased between 25-75% is based on the current shared ownership model and our shared ownership homes under the existing scheme. You may have heard that there are some changes to the Shared Ownership model on the way. Whilst this doesn’t impact on our current shared ownership homes for sale we will be updating our website with more details around the new model soon. If you have any questions about this in the meantime please do get in touch with us or visit the Government’s website to find out more.
In the first ever episode of "This Shared Ownership Thing" Podcast, Cheryl Gibbens (Marketing Officer) and Gemma Robinson (Senior Marketing Officer) gather round the mic to discuss their top 3 FAQ’s about Shared Ownership, Toby & Sam's Aster Life Story, Buying guide - how to find a mortgage lender and Aster's upcoming Launches. #ThisSOThing
The conversation surrounding shares being purchased between 25-75% is based on the current shared ownership model and our shared ownership homes under the existing scheme. You may have heard that there are some changes to the Shared Ownership model on the way. Whilst this doesn’t impact on our current shared ownership homes for sale we will be updating our website with more details around the new model soon. If you have any questions about this in the meantime please do get in touch with us or visit the Government’s website to find out more.
Hello, and welcome to the shared ownership thing, podcasts with the Astor sales team. Each month we sit down to discuss frequently, asked questions, share the incredible stories of our customers. And we dispel the myths and rumors of shared ownership. My name's Cheryl, and this week I'm joined by my cohost, the fabulous Jamie Robinson. In this episode, we're going to discuss the top three. FAQ's our esta life stories, information surrounding our buying guide and the upcoming launches of our new shared ownership homes. So before we get started, we'll just take a minute to introduce ourselves. So my name is Cheryl Gibbons and I am a marketing officer for Astra sales over TJ. Thank you, Cheryl. So my name is Gemma Robinson and I'm the senior marketing officer within Astor sales team. I'm currently covering a maternity leave. Cover was Alex is on leave. Fabulous. And is that anything cool or interesting about yourself that you can share? Oh, that's a really good question. I don't particularly think of myself as that. Cool. Um, but I would probably say the cool thing is about me. Oh, that's a really good question, Cheryl. I would say the fact that I was born in the channel islands, so somewhere a little bit different. Um, and we lived there for a little while before coming back over to England. So that's a little cool fact about me. Um, something a bit different for code jam. And one thing I'm going to drop in there about myself of course, is that I've just completed their 24 hour national three-peat challenge. And if you're wondering, I will be dropping that into every single conversation from now on. So, right. So Cheryl was a great achievement. Okay. So here's a few questions for our listeners to get to know you jam. Are you ready? I am indeed. Are you a dog or a cat person? Ooh, that's a good one. Definitely dog. Well there few years ago probably would have said a cat until we got our dog Elsa because she rules the rigs. So I'm going to go with dog. Okay. Um, next question. If you're just working at home, are you someone who wears jeans or are you allowing directly hang on? So people actually wear jeans when they're at home. I didn't even realize that was a thing hundred percent lounge wear. I'm all about the comfort, kind of the only staple part of my wardrobe, uh, logins or lounge, or I don't know about anybody else, but I certainly, uh, opt for the leggins over jeans every day of the week now Mechanica. And the last question is what is your preference? Starbucks. And it was star bees or Acosta. Oh, I think it depends on the drink. I think if there's a hot drink, I'm going to go Costa, but if it's a cold drink, like a frat pack or something like that, I'm going to go Starbucks. Okay. Controversial maybe, but you know, a little bit on the fence. I like both depending on the type of beverage and just for our listeners, especially if Amy Nettleton's listening. What is your favorite cold coffee drink? Oh, um, I, well, it's not really necessarily a cold coffee drink, but I'm quite, I do like, uh, um, a chill chai tea. And what is in a chatty? Well, it's a nice Chuy's spicy cinnamon flavors and, um, I think it's more tea based as opposed to coffee, but, um, it's just a really kind of makes me think of summer and it's quite a nice, refreshing drink itself. It's not to everybody's cup of tea, but I certainly like it. I'm sure you can get Amy try in that sometimes. I'm not sure. Okay. So moving on to shared ownership, presumably you found this podcast as you're interested in shared ownership, and you want to find out more about the product and how it works, but for those of you that don't know shared ownership is a model that enables you to purchase a share of a home, usually between 25 to 75% and you pay rent on the remaining share. And the deposits are usually a minimum of 5% of the share that you purchase. So for our first topic, we're going to share some of the questions that we frequently get asked through live chat or social media or on the phones from our amazing customers. So gem, I'm going to ask you some of the questions that we are asked most frequently. Okay. Are you ready? I am in deep. Go ahead. Okay. So for shared ownership, what sorts of deposit would someone need? Okay, so this is a great one. So you usually only need a 5% deposit based upon the percentage share of the property you're buying. So just as an example, if you were to buy a 40% share in a 300,000 pound property, so the share would be 120,000 pains, your 5% deposit would actually be based upon the share. So the 120,000 pounds you're buying as opposed to the full property price. So that would mean it's around the 6,000 pounds mark. So it's far more achievable as opposed to having to raise a deposit on the full market value. Okay, perfect. That makes sense. Next question. Can you buy more shares once you've purchased your initial share? So say I went and purchased 30% of a home. Could I then go on to buy more shares in the future? Absolutely. And that is the beauty of shared ownership. You don't have to stick at the share you initially buy, you can do if you wish to, but you can obviously buy more if you want to. Um, it's called decades thing. So that's the jargon that we use to buy more shares. Um, and in most cases you can staircase and buy a hundred percent of the property. Now I say most cases because there are some homes in which has a cap on the staircase casing amount that you can purchase, but that can be outlined to you before you purchase the home itself. So you you'll be made aware at the outset what the maximum you can buy. But like we say, in most instances you can go into by a hundred percent of the property and then buy outright. Okay. So if someone was wanting to staircase their home, would they do that through Aster? Absolutely. We've got a dedicated team of resale and staircasing team, um, led by Anna and Karen. And you have a dedicated resale negotiator who would actually be able to guide you through the whole process. It was all dealt with in house. Um, so we can guide you through this every step of the way, you know, full information is on our website about that. But if anyone's ever got any questions about how the process works, they can get in touch with us on live chat or on social media, and we can talk them through exactly what they would need to do. Fabulous. Thank you. And the last question, if someone has purchased a shared ownership home with Aster, but would then like to sell it a few years later, would they be able to do that? Absolutely. And it kind of leads on from the question previously as well. We have a dedicated team that can help dig this. So as soon as you decide, you want to sell, if you want to sell, um, your property will get valued. I'm placed on the market with Aster. So we have a eight week period in which we were trying to sell that property to you bearing in mind, we have, uh, a database of people that are looking for properties in different areas. So we're quite well-placed to do that. Um, if the property hasn't sold within that timeframe, you can obviously go to another estate agent of your choice and sell it through them. Fabulous. Thank you, gem. So that is the three most common questions we've been asked recently, mainly on our live chat function on our website. So it's good to get those answered, um, for any more answers to our FAQ, as you can also visit astor.co.uk forward slash FAQ, or you can ask your question direct by emailing us on home ownership, astor.co.uk, or you can contact us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or via live chat on our website. So next we are going to look at one of our Astor life stories. So the story that we'll be playing is salmon, Toby, and there'll be telling us all about their shared ownership journey with Asda. They were looking for a place that they could call home for themselves and something that they could also afford in the Oxfordshire area.
Speaker 2:
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Speaker 3:
Both seminar had a, a period where we were renting obviously, and Oxford is notoriously expensive for many reasons. Um, so the kind of desire to get out of the rental property market and into, onto the property ladder, so to speak was kind of always the aim. That was the time to both kind of get away from renting and towards more stable.
Speaker 4:
We pay whenever we do pay less in rent, pretty much I'd say, and we also own a place and that comes and you do feel different when you actually own some way you sorta feel very proud of it. And, and you want to be that with what I've noticed sort of beforehand. I didn't really care about where I stayed. Um, it was just someone to wake up and go to bed in, but now I find myself actually wanting to go home.
Speaker 3:
Aster is a housing developer and also, um, the housing association. So they build their own houses for sale, um, for direct sell for shared ownership. Um, and then also housing association as well, that markets properties As to helped a lot just by, by being, um, a source of information for it, because it's quite a daunting thing when you're making that first step. And, um, certainly my generation, I did another thing we'd be able to just cause it seemed just the way everything was going that we renting forever. Um, but I still was quite like a solid source of information to say, I know there are other ways just of getting, uh, getting there, um, other than just sort of the more traditional route and they, yeah, they, they sort of told us all about shadow shared ship
Speaker 4:
As to just get on with things they don't burden you with things you don't actually have to know about. They're just there when you need them. Um, at the end of the phone or on email, they just do an awful lot of hard work, but, um, you're sort of unaware of it and you're happy with that because you trust them.
Speaker 3:
I asked to take the stress out of that. Um, and when you're a first time, when you're first on buyer, that's a massive, massive thing. That's almost hard to overstate and they make the process, um, very surprisingly easy, uh, which again, for people, our age in our situation was a massive, massive help.
Speaker 4:
No, it's the best thing I've ever done. And, um, that is in a massive way to
Speaker 1:
Them. I think this is a fantastic life story. I know I've seen this a few times and heard about Sam and Toby. Um, what I particularly love about their story is they were well aware of Oxfordshire being super, super expensive. Um, they didn't obviously feel that it was achievable to buy a property in the area they loved. Um, but shared ownership really allowed them to continue to stay in a place they love to live and actually be able to call it home. So it's really given them the security that they were after. And that's why I love about the shared ownership product. You can stay in the place that you want to live. You not necessarily push to another area due to costs and you know, the cost of the property itself. So I think it also highlights how the product can work for you. So you can stay in an area you want to live in. Yeah, I think as well, one really special thing. Um, Simon, Toby both mentioned in the life story, how, before they had found a home, they, they were just in a place that they could drop all their stuff off that like they didn't refer to it as home, but shared ownership has enabled them to actually have a place that they can call home themselves. So yeah, really special and a good story for how shared ownership works for people. Definitely. Um, so you can also visit aster.co.uk forward slash life stories to watch more of our customer testimonials. If you would like to hear their stories,
Speaker 2:
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Speaker 1:
Now we're going to move on to buying guide. So if you're thinking about buying your first home, but you don't know where to begin, we have a handy buyer's guide on our website. You can find this on aster.co.uk forward slash property buying guide. And for this part of the buying guide episode, we're going to discuss how to find a mortgage lender. So Jen, if I was to look at buying a shared ownership home, how, where would I start in trying to find a mortgage lender? What would I do? Okay. So there, there are various ways in which you can find a mortgage lender. So, you know, the typical online research asking friends and family for, you know, recommendations or word of mouth. Um, the good thing here Aster is we do work with a company called T M P, which stands for the mortgage people. Now they can help you. Um, not only do the affordability assessments to work out the share of the property you can afford to buy, but they also really well-placed and they know the other, um, they know the shared initial mortgage providers that are out there and can advise on lenders available for you and your circumstances. So they really take the hassle out of finding the right mortgage product, because with shared ownership, you will need a specific shared ownership, mortgage product type, as opposed to a mortgage that you could get on the high street. Say for instance, so one thing, you know, we always would like to say, you know, if you've got any questions about the whole process, the affordability assessments, or how to reach TMP, get in touch with us, we're always available for you to contact us on live chat or social media. So you can just pop us a message and we can certainly direct you to TMP tops a bit, to be able to provide you some advice in, in this regards. Perfect. Thank you, Jim. That's super helpful to know
Speaker 2:
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Speaker 1:
And lastly, on our first little episode, we are going to go through the exciting upcoming launches that we have for our new homes. So Jim, would you like to share what locations we have shared ownership times coming up then? Absolutely. So it's going to be a really busy couple of months for us or so it's really fantastic opportunity to get your foot on that property ladder. So we'll have a couple of properties coming to hot field place in Alton, which is in Hampshire. Um, we've also got some properties at Carrington place in red hill, in Surrey, common Meadows in Wallingford, Oxford share river's edge in Wimborne Dorset the pavilions in now, excuse me in advance. Does it[inaudible] thank you, Sharon. I show knows this because child looks after Oxford share. So thank you. There you feel it's into jester in Sussex, rotary park in north bursted in Sussex shop white lakes. And to just start in Sussex lock back in Barnstable in Devin, um, Victoria Heights in Exeter in Devon. So you can really see there's a vast amount, you know, coming to Hampshire, Surrey, Oxford shed Dorset and Sussex and Devin tags, you know, across the whole of the safe from the Southwest. And they will be proud of definitely. And if anyone was wondering, if you are looking for new home, we cover areas started from the bottom Cornwell and Devin, and we go right up to the Sussex Surrey Oxfordshire area. So if you're looking for a home there, we might have something for you, but anyway, thank you so much, Jen, for jumping on the podcast today for episode one, absolute pleasure. Thank you for inviting me along. It's been lovely having you and thank you to everyone for listening. This shared ownership thing podcast is brought to you by us to sales and you can visit aster.co.uk forward slash sales for more information.