“The impact on me has been anxiety, because you put your life plans on hold,” he said. “You’re worried about having this potentially worthless asset that, in this case, I saved up quite long and hard for in order to be able to buy.”
He said he now regretted signing up to the shared ownership scheme, which had been marketed as an affordable way to get on the property ladder. It was the only way he would have been able to afford to buy at the time, he said.
“I absolutely want to have nothing to do with that flat or any shared ownership schemes in the future,” he added.
‘I can no longer afford childcare’
Nicola Oldcroft, 36, also used shared ownership when she bought her first flat in London in 2016; she paid £110,000 for a 30pc share of the property. The purchase had come at an emotional time: she was able to afford it only because she had been severely assaulted and managed to get some compensation in court.
When her partner moved in, they managed to increase their ownership share to 100pc. They are also on a standard variable rate mortgage and their payments have gone from £922 a month in March last year to £1,410 now.
Ms Oldcroft, a bereavement counsellor, has been unable to get a fixed deal owing to the cladding on the building, which she found out about only after she had bought the flat. She and her partner have two children, aged one and three, and they have been desperate to sell the flat but are unable to do so until the cladding is removed.
