Scheme can help get a Lift on to the housing ladder
First-time buyers in Shetland are being encouraged to find out how the Scottish government’s Low-cost Initiative for First Time Buyers (Lift) scheme could help them purchase an affordable new home.
The Lift scheme provides eligible applicants with funding between 10 per cent and 40 per cent toward the purchase price of a property which has been advertised on the open market.
It helps first-time buyers and also gives priority access to groups including social renters, disabled and older people with housing need, armed forces personnel and veterans who have recently left the armed forces.
SIC executive manager of housing Anita Jamieson said: “We welcome any initiative which supports people to have choices around accessingaffordable housing.”
According to the government the scheme, managed for the past 12 years by Link Group Ltd, had helped thousands of individuals and families into a new home.
Lift customer Morag Campbell said: “I thought it was going to take me years to buy a home, but then I found out about the Lift scheme.
“It helped ease some of the financial pressure I felt and I managed to buy a home sooner than I thought was possible. I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve recommended the scheme to.”
Link Group chief executive Craig Sanderson said: “It’s great to know the Lift scheme has helped so many people purchase a high-quality home at an affordable price. We look forward to helping more buyers take their first step onto the property ladder.”
Find out more by visiting www.linkhousing.co.uk/lift
James J Paton
This ongoing obsession with home ownership is part of the housing problem, not it’s solution. People seem to have forgotten that the financial crash in 2008 was due to sub-prime mortgages. People see how.e ownership as some kind of ‘ investment’. It is if the value continualky goes up. What if it goes down? Housing, in England has be one an ultimate cash cow for people to pay for care in their failing years. Although this does not apply in Shetland ( yet) , the Shetland economy cannot as yet support an ongoing unsustainable housing ‘ market’. Another example of where ‘millenials’ will pay the price, quite literally, for their parent and grand- parents follies and greed.
The demonisation of renting in the public sector and stigmatisation of people who rent from housing associations such as Hjaltland Housing Association is also part of the problem. Publicly owned housing, that is effectively reinvesting in homes for future generations is a much more cost effective, economic and sensible approach, especially in smaller communities. If the SIC had invested much of its oil funds in affordable public housing – the long term economic and social benefits would have out-weighed unethical stock market investment. The same would apply if it had invested in its own energy and Telecoms/ IT provision. Still time.
Alvin Leong
To be honest, the housing market in Shetland is already pretty unsustainable for most normal working first time buyers, due to the prices of homes being pushed up due to rental to the oil industry. Yet the SIC want to take more properties off the market by using them to house refugees, madness!
David Spence
I agree with James fully in his comments regarding the Tory Governments obsession with people owning their on house. It is not only this, but the Tory Government will use Tax Payers money to help ‘ first time buyers ‘ get on the property market by buying their first house/home.
Thatcher introduced ‘ the right to buy social housing ‘ in the 1980’s, but also reduced Local Authority budgets to replace social housing which had been bought by tenants, to which now we are having serious problems with housing, especially social housing. Both Governments, Conservative and Labour, are to blame for this serious shortage of social housing, and where Local Authorities have been forced to spend millions up millions putting people into private accommodation, where private landlords have hugely benefited immensely by grossly over-charging Local Authorities as much as, in some areas of London, £2,000 – £3,000 a week or more.
The in balance of this has forced many people to go back to social housing, what there is, due to not being able to pay off the mortgage.
Ultimately, as James has mentioned, it is the banks which benefited mostly from such dealings.
Alvin Leong
The OMSE Scheme offered by the Scottish Government had existed for many years now. That scheme “should” be administered by HHA but I do not know what they are doing about it. I had been on OHAL’s (and SIC’s) waiting list for over 5 years and neither told me about this scheme. Surprised that Anita Jamieson is “welcoming” this old scheme now while it existed for years already, great head of Housing she is!
I was on OHAL for just 1 year when they called me in for a meeting to tell me about this scheme. It helped me to buy my first house 2 years ago.
Alvin Leong
“on OHAL’s (and SIC’s) waiting list for over 5 years” should be “on HHA’s (and SIC’s) waiting list for over 5 years”