Flexible tenure

If you are in financial difficulty we strongly recommend you seek professional advice as soon as possible, before your situation worsens and your home is put at risk.    You should alert your mortgage lender and seek advice from an independent debt counselling agency, eg, the Citizens Advice Bureau.

Please note Estuary staff are not qualified to provide financial advice.

Estuary will assess applications for flexible tenure (buying back shares in your property) from people in severe financial difficulties who have purchased a shared ownership home through the Association.   This option is only available to people who have exhausted all other options and require this assessment as a last resort.    We can only help people whose financial difficulties are connected with their inability to pay their mortgage and/or rent, from circumstances beyond their control eg, loss of income because of relationship breakdown, illness or redundancy.   Flexible tenure is not available for those shared owners who have accumulated debts through unsecured loans or credit cards.

A flexible tenure option exists under which Estuary’s shared owners could become assured tenants. However cases approved to proceed via this option are extremely rare and are subject to strict criteria.    Once a property has been repossessed by the lender, flexible tenure ceases to be an option.

Flexible tenure is regulated by the Tenant Services Authority, Housing Association’s regulating Government body. According to their rules Estuary can only buy back shares in a property to the value of the outstanding mortgage and rent and/or mortgage arrears.   Funding for this requires special approvals that may, or may not be granted.   Flexible tenure is not a given right or entitlement for shared owners.

To qualify to just being assessed you need  to be an Estuary shared owner, currently owning less than 100% of the property and be paying rent on the unsold equity in the property. The term “rent” excludes ground rent and service charges.

Flexible tenure is not available to other owner occupiers, including former shared owners or those who have bought a property through a discount or incentive scheme such as Right to Buy, Right to Acquire, the Tenants’ Incentive scheme or the Homebuy (shared equity) scheme.