Paul and his wife Carole purchased a 25% share in a 3 bedroom home at Rowan Wood.

This is Paul’s Snugg Homes story…

“We wanted to move as we had been in rented accommodation for several decades. As we are getting on a bit, we wanted the security of having our own property.

Before moving, we had lived for many years in a remote rural property, renting from a country estate. The house was a couple of hundred years old and both it and the surrounding countryside were spectacular to look at but … very expensive to heat, very damp and it was a long way to the nearest shop!

We first found out about Shared Ownership on a different housing trusts website who were building some properties near to where we previously lived.

We were drawn to Shared Ownership because of the affordable entry into purchasing our own property. Both being in our mid 60’s, it also helped that a few mortgage lenders had recently launched mortgages into retirement and we were able to get an affordable mortgage on our 25% share meaning our deposit was doable. At first we thought Shared Ownership was too good to be true, but it really is as good as it seems!

Our life has changed for the better since we moved into our new property in the summer. The house is lovely and warm and dry and makes really good use of the energy we are using, pretty essential these days. It’s been nice to have a blank canvas to stamp our own mark on, something we are still doing and really enjoying it. It’s also been great to develop our back garden ourselves. It’ll take a couple of seasons to knock it into shape, but we’re getting there. Our house is a very solidly built semi and we can’t hear our neighbours through the separating wall – you wouldn’t know they were there.

We love the house, it’s just the right size for us and having only had one bathroom for many years we now have the luxury of having three! With our estate only having 20 odd houses it means we’ve gotten to know our neighbours fairly quickly and the estate fits really well into the local area. We also like that the estate roads and pavements were all finished off properly as soon as the houses were occupied. There are several estates locally that have been lived on for a couple of years and still have not had the roads/pavements finished.

We are very pleased with the way Snugg dealt with our purchase of the property. Due to the fallout from the pandemic it wasn’t easy for the builders to keep up to schedule some of the time, but we were always kept up to speed on any delays and why they were happening.

I’m 66 (don’t look a day over 65 though!) and my lovely wife Carole is a couple of years younger. Carole was born and brought up here in Longridge, so has really come back to her hometown. I’m a Blackpool lad – ‘a Sand grown ‘un’. We had lived for 20 years in south Cumbria, in and around the Lake District National Park, a lovely part of the world, as is this corner of rural Lancashire.”

Kind Regards

Paul