Digging for discounts

Buyers turn builders for £10,000 off mortgage

- Rupert Jones

A scheme that enables people to get thousands of pounds off their mortgage in exchange for mucking in to build their home could provide a route to ownership for those struggling to raise a big enough deposit.

Work recently finished on an affordable housing development in Greater Manchester where buyers were given a £10,000 contribution towards their mortgage deposit.

But to get it, they had to commit to doing 500 hours of work on the site, with tasks ranging from general labour, painting and landscaping to marketing and IT support.

This type of scheme is known as “sweat equity”.

The 27-home development in Ince, Wigan, is the result of a linkup between the housing association Prima Group and the charity Housing People Building Communities (HPBC).

A disused church was converted into 13 apartments priced from £125,000, with 14 new three-bedroom homes built on adjacent land. These were priced at between £190,000 and £197,500.

Rachael McCoy, a nurse who also works at a nearby beauty salon, says the scheme “came along at the perfect time”. It meant “we could secure a safe home by working for it rather than needing to save for a deposit”.

“I’ve lived in Ince all my life, and my family are all local. We wanted to stay in the area because my daughter goes to school here, but we needed a three-bedroom home. Getting on the property ladder right now is really difficult, and the mortgage payments would have crippled us,” McCoy says.