Having read that The Help to Buy housing programme (Saturday, August 31) has only helped a minority of high earners, but has done little for most private rents looking for a stable home, I felt the need to add my thoughts to this statement.

We’re in the private renting sector, and have been in our present house for two years, however the owner of the house now needs to raise funds for her nursing home care, so has sold the property, meaning that we now have two months to find suitable accommodation.

In Weymouth this is turning out to be a nightmare, most of the properties available are now over the £1k pcm mark, and although we have a private pension, we’d be hard pushed to find funds for our basic bills, council tax, gas/electric, food etc., not to mention the odd treat for our grandchildren.

We’ve looked into the shared housing scheme, but due to our ages, one over 65 and the other over 70, we’d have to go for the OPSO scheme, we can’t find any providers of that scheme here in the Weymouth area.

We’d love to have the stability of knowing that we wouldn’t lose our home again, the very thought of packing up and moving this time is bad enough but one letting agent asked us if we’d be prepared to move again in say 12 months time!

Apart from the obvious expense of the move itself, there’s also the deposit and (usually) five weeks rent to find, so over a couple of grand there! The OPSOS – Older Persons Shared Ownership Scheme, is where we’d be able to hand over a very small deposit (usually around the same amount as we’d have to put down at the onset of renting, or whatever you’re comfortable with over that amount) but whereas the Shared Ownership means the buyer can buy the whole of the shares available and therefore own the property (at some point) outright over say the 25 years of their mortgage, with the OPSOS, due to our ages we’d have a shorter mortgage period and only be able to buy 75 per cent of the property.

It would still mean that we’d be able to have the security we and others in our situation would dearly love to enjoy.

When we first started to look into the chance of buying a property, because of our ages we’d be expected to put 50 per cent of the property asking price down as a deposit, who has this sort of money in this day and age? Surely if older people could obtain mortgages, should anything happen to them, then either a family member could offer to take over the payments, or the property would revert to the mortgage lender, either way, the mortgage lender wouldn’t be out of pocket?

Come on, someone please look at this question with common sense.

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