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Contact

  • Phone:
    020 8502 5758
    Opening times:
    Head Office Monday to Friday 9am - 5.30pm
    (Please note that flexible viewing times are available including weekends)

Key Documents

Donna Barbary

Senior administrator Donna Barbary started renting in her late 20s after combining world travel with living at her parent’s house. But six years as a tenant was enough for Donna, who vowed to escape the rental trap and buy her own home before she turned 35.

“I’d been thinking about buying for a while. I wanted my own space and my own things around me,” says Donna. “I thought: ‘if I don’t do it now, I never will’.”

However, she knew her salary meant she couldn’t afford to buy a home on the open market. As these two factors were starting to rankle, Donna spotted an article about the New Build HomeBuy scheme (formerly known as shared ownership) in the local press that would lead to her cherished own home.

She attended a Housing Options show to explore the concept, which enables people earning low to moderate salaries to part buy, part rent a new home and settle in the capital.

Shortly after, she registered via www.housingoptions.co.uk – the one-stop online portal offering hundreds of low cost, home ownership properties available in London. “The website was great,” she says. “A quick search showed me what properties I could apply for based on my favoured areas of London.”

Donna scanned a list of new developments, their purchase status, property sizes, upper limit approval salaries and housing association telephone numbers.

She liked the look of Explorers Court – a newly built development in the historic Docklands area of east London – marketed and run by One Housing Group. The housing association responded to Donna’s call within two days and she visited the showhome a week later.

Three months later, Donna had bought a 35% share and moved into her very own one-bedroom apartment through the New Build Homebuy scheme.

“One Housing Group was absolutely fantastic,” she says. “The handover was smooth, all letters were sent through promptly and I received a huge information pack listing maintenance contacts and how the built-in appliances worked. It was a really good, quick and very friendly service and I have already recommended the shared ownership concept to my colleagues.”

Donna is also delighted with her fifth floor apartment, which has a fully-fitted kitchen, a lounge big enough to accommodate friends overnight, built in kitchen units, double glazing, lovely fittings, wood laminate flooring and a tiled bathroom.

“I didn’t have to make any improvements when I moved in,” she says. “I can see the river and the Millennium Dome from my balcony and there’s even a video entry phone system to make it really secure.”

She is thrilled with the location too. Not only has its proximity to East India DLR, near Canary Wharf, shaved a third off Donna’s previous 45-minute daily commute to Charing Cross, but she also enjoys being near the river, lively bars and restaurants, and Greenwich. “I shared a house there for the past three years. I love the area and have friends there,” she says.

Donna’s monthly mortgage repayments and rent on the 65% share she doesn’t own exceed her old rent by £300. Despite this, she considers her new home good value. “I’m living in a brand new property that’s mine, rather than renting a run-down place in a bad area,” she says. “And I didn’t want to endlessly waste dead money on paying off someone else’s mortgage.

“When I heard about the Housing Options scheme, I thought it was too good an opportunity to miss,” says non-key worker Donna, who qualified for the scheme because she was a first time buyer, earning more than the minimum single income bracket, set at £24,000 for the development.

“It’s a great scheme for people like me who have okay jobs but don’t have fantastic salaries. I don’t think you can lose,” she says. “It’s a brilliant way to get on the mortgage ladder, there’s no landlord to answer to and, in theory, I will make some money on my share in future.

“Every night, when I put the key in the lock, I think how great that it’s mine,” she adds. “It’s so new and shiny and it gives me great satisfaction that I’m finally doing something with my money.”