RAISING your kids alone is tough enough – but it’s even harder if you’re saving up to buy a house too.
Single mum-of-one Joanna Trębowicz made the most of government schemes to get a whopping £45,000 discount on her first home, which she shares with her 14-year-old son Gabriel.
Joanna shares her home with her 14-year-old son Gabriel
Joanna bought her three-bedroom home in Leeds in November 2022
The mum-of-one got a huge discount on her home
Joanna, 38, used the Right to Buy scheme to buy her three-bedroom council house in Leeds.
It’s a government initiative that lets council house tenants buy the property they rent.
Joanna, who was working part-time in a school and claiming Universal Credit, realised the scheme was her best chance of getting on the housing ladder.
These homes are offered at a reduced price to help renters into ownership.
It meant Joanna ended up paying £80,000 for her council house – even though its market value stands at £125,000.
This was a discount of 38% because she had lived in her home for eight years – and knocked more than £45,000 off the asking price.
The maximum discount you can get through the scheme 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.
You’re a public sector tenant if you rent your home from the local authority or a registered social landlord, such as a housing association.
However, the maximum the discount can reach 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 ten 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.
Joanna put down a deposit of £10,000 to secure her home, but not all lenders require this.
For example, some lenders treat your Right to Buy discount as your deposit, while others will not.
Joanna completed on her three-bedroom home in Leeds in November 2022.
We sat down with Joanna to discuss how she went from being a saver to a homeowner for HOAR’s My First Home series.
Tell me about your home
It is a three-bedroom house in Leeds.
There’s a master bedroom, my son Gabriel’s bedroom and then one box room. There is also a bathroom upstairs.
I have both a front and back garden and a separate kitchen and living room.
How did you decide on location?
I have lived in my house for eight years and I have really good neighbours, which is very important.
At first, I wasn’t sure if I was going to buy the house I was living in, or try to find another property on the market.
So I decided to explore the housing market and speak to mortgage brokers, and they advised me to look at the Right to Buy Scheme.
I am single mum and working part-time and receiving Universal Credit, so they said it was my best route onto the housing ladder.
How much did you pay for it?
The house was valued at £125,000 but I got a 38% discount and bought it for £80,000.
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.
At that point, I had lived in the house for eight-years, meaning I got 38% off the value of the house – a reduction of more than £45,000.
The sale was completed in November 2022.
I took out a mortgage of £70,000 and I paid a deposit of £10,000.
The mortgage term is 32-years at a five-year fixed rate of 2.66%.
The monthly mortgage repayments are around £267 a month.
I also had a Help to Buy Isa which I opened in 2017.
By the time I was ready to buy, I had saved up around £6,000 in that account.
The bonus from the Help to Buy Isa was around £2,000.
How did you save for it?
I first started saving for a deposit in 2017 when I decided I was going to buy my home.
I spoke to several brokers, three of which said there was no chance of buying because I was only working part-time and receiving Universal Credit.
Only one of them took on my case and found two banks who would be willing to give me a mortgage.
I was told I would need a deposit of around 10% so I started saving.
I had always been careful with money so I set myself a strict budget of around £700 a month.
This would cover my rent, household bills and the food shop.
I would then try to put away around £500 a month into my savings.
In order to save, I gave up luxuries such as meals out, which I would do around twice a month before.
Instead, we would just eat out on special occasions, like birthdays.
Cooking from scratch and buying ingredients also helped me to get to my target amount for saving.
I allowed myself to spend every now and again on things for my son, like trips to Poland to visit my family or a summer camping trip.
Because I stayed in the same property, I didn’t have to pay for any new furniture which was a huge saving.
What advice would you give to other first-time buyers?
The main thing is to know your budget. Sit down with a notebook, a piece of paper and a pen and work out your incomings and outgoings.
Then work out what you can give up and what’s essential.
It doesn’t matter how long it takes you, or how you do it, all that matters is that you get there in the end.
Here is how one family used the snowball method to clear £26,000 worth of debt and buy their first home.
And one savvy saver managed to put half of his wages away while still renting to buy his first home.
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