Partial ownership housing on the up
TURNOVER of partial ownership housing in Guernsey is starting to pick up, 15 years after the scheme was introduced.
The Guernsey Housing Association started providing homes for partial ownership in 2007 and has continued to add to its stock.
In 2021 it built 14 more – alongside 19 new rented homes – bringing the total number to 233 out of the 1,017 that the GHA owns, part-owns or rents.
Over the last 12 years, 117 partial ownership homes have been sold back to the GHA for reselling. This can happen when a relationship ends, or as a result of a death.
But chief executive Steve Williams said only about 50 of these re-acquisitions were due to the part-owners moving into the private housing sector – effectively having succeeded in using the scheme as a stepping stone into the market.
However, he said that the rate at which this was happening had seen a marked increase in recent years, and argued that this was an indication of the effective management of the scheme. ‘This has been running for 15 years now and we’re seeing an increase, which is what we would expect,’ he said.
‘If the part-owners were able to sell the property on straight away, it would indicate that we had sold it to the wrong person.’
The GHA has several new sites at various stages of completion to bring more housing stock onto the market.
It had 566 rented homes and 165 extra care homes at the end of last year, along with 45 key worker homes and eight autism-designed homes.
The association has an overall debt of £90.5m., which is being paid off by rental income and is due to be paid off, in theory, by 2046, though further tranches of borrowing will be necessary before then if the GHA’s future projects get the go ahead.
