Abode Recruitment

A Yorkshire housing association is thought to be the first to launch an open market estate, letting and managing agency.

Crucible Homes, the sale and intermediate tenure arm of South Yorkshire Housing Association, started the business about three months ago and is now managing properties for its first private landlords.

The organisation began selling the homes of people who were moving into its extra care developments. It then received requests from members of the public to sell their properties.

It was also approached by private landlords who knew of Crucible through its intermediate rental schemes and wanted the firm to manage their homes.

The organisation’s development programme for outright sale is on hold until the market improves and it has moved into other areas, such as estate agency, in the meantime.

John Spon-Smith, managing director of Crucible, said starting an estate agency in a property downturn would normally be difficult but Crucible was already an established organisation. ‘This is supplementing our core activity of selling property for SYHA. We are layering a new activity over it,’ he said.

Mr Spon-Smith would not say what kind of profits the firm hoped to generate from the sales and letting agency work. ‘We will carve out a niche in the area to generate profit but it’s not for me to talk about profit numbers. We can generate a significant and profitable regional estate agency because it builds on our fundamental strength,’ he said.

The agency is advertising around 15 properties for sale on the open market. Crucible also sold around 80 shared ownership properties last year and has 70 intermediate rented homes.

In August, Crucible launched a 100 per cent mortgage with Mansfield Building Society for shared owners who cannot raise a deposit. The building society will offer mortgages for around 35 properties. So far four mortgage offers have been approved while 20 more are being assessed by the lender and an independent financial adviser.

‘The biggest single problem in our market is finding buyers with a deposit and it overcomes that situation. It needs to be managed carefully to make sure the lending is responsible and people can repay it. I think in the future this will become standard.’