First time buyers get on the ladder26.04.12
A young couple have overcome the difficulties facing first time buyers and purchased the home of their dreams with a shared equity scheme offered by North East homebuilder Dunelm Homes. Nursery practitioner Mary-Louise Bungard, 21 and service engineer Nicolas Hardy, 24 were determined to purchase their first property together and move out of their parents’ home but were dismayed by a lack of available mortgages for buyers in their situation.
Mary-Louise said: “Like many first-time buyers, we have stayed living with our parents in order to save money to put towards a house and we had saved around £7,000 in total, but when we started to look for a home, there were very few mortgage products catering for our financial situation. However, when we visited the Heritage Way site in Seaham, the Dunelm Homes sales advisor talked us through some of the different options available and explained how a shared equity plan might work for first time buyers like ourselves to purchase the kind of home we wanted.”
Mary Louise and Nicolas used the deposit they had already saved, along with a shared equity loan from Dunelm Homes as part of the company’s 85/15 shared equity scheme to qualify for a more accessible loan to value mortgage. This allowed the couple to purchase a three-bedroom property priced at £147,000 at the Heritage Way development in Seaham.
Colin Willetts, sales director at Dunelm Homes said, “Renting is increasingly expensive as more and more first time buyers are locked out of the property market but shared equity schemes such as 85/15 and FirstBuy make it possible to access the support of Dunelm Homes and the government to qualify for smaller loan to value mortgages, often with a small initial deposit. We’re delighted that we can assist buyers such as Mary-Louise and Nicolas by enabling them to take an alternative route to home ownership and begin their life together at Heritage Way in Seaham.”
