I was told to go to Metro finance to apply for shared ownership property. Communication is beyond poor between Metro and the housing associations (Gecko). Metro pester you with automated texts to upload your documents to their portal. You get the first case worker who answers the phone so its pot luck!! As a first time buyer, I needed advice on finances, but my case worker couldn't answer any questions beyond using the online calculators and crucially told me I didn't need to put in all of my savings towards buying a property. I was allowed to hold some back. He assessed for a 10% deposit and I was led to believe I was on track.
I completed a duty of care assessment which is laughable because Metro went on to demonstrate that they have zero care towards your mental health or finances. Day 3 in the process, I received a call at 5pm, telling me I had to purchase 30% share of property not the 25% I'd been assessed for and to stomp up 25k deposit. I also had let Metro know by the morning!! At this point, I wouldn't have been surprised if my case worker had held me at gun point as well!
My case worker put me under so much pressure and left me feeling totally confused. He didn't talk through any benefits or plan to why I should put more money in. The excuse was that its the HAs decision. As a financial institution Metro should be ashamed! This was unacceptable demand on anyone and it felt like Scam territory!
Thankfully I didn't agree to it, but then I was told I needed to answer how the money I was putting forward for the property would be allocated. Another words I now had to tell my case worker there own calculations for the deposit, solicitor fees, adding furnishing, flooring. And god forbid you might want to keep some of your own money back for life events or an emergency.
There's a real lack of expertise about finance, professionalism, they can't seem to give you the numbers clearly or send you an email with a breakdown of everything to show you the workings out. It's also very slow, it took more than a week and half trying to reserve a property and with all the delays it was then reserved by someone else. Again Metro seemed clueless about when the HAs had already given a property to another person so no shared information.You get one phone call a day from your case worker and don't expect them pick up when you call back.
AI did a better job with the finances, communication and forecasting budgets for 3-5 years! From this companies website, you can tell it's cheap and some of the staff photos do make you wonder who you're giving your money too!
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Metro Finance - Total efficiency in the provision of shared ownership mortgages, support and eligibility testing for Housing Associations, UK wide
