12 years ago myself & my husband moved in to a Guinness Partnership house with our 3 children. We were sold the promise of an affordable new house in a new housing development only for local people. We were moving from a 2 bedroom house (of which we had freehold, with a full mortgage) in to a shared ownership 3 bedroom house. We needed a larger house for our family,but houses in our area were extremely expensive. Guinness were offering the solution, apparently. BUT, they only offered a 3 bed house (which I found odd,knowing we needed a 4 bed, and they had them.) They also took forever to reply to simply questions from our solicitors. They NEVER said this house would be a leasehold. Some of the shared ownership on this development are freehold & some are leasehold. We weren't told until it was too late & we had already sold our home. Durring the 1st year, there were lots of issues with the house, which they refused to fix(even though they would have been covered) Gardens did not have drainage, so we had to remove everything and pave the whole area. This was difficult as they put an extremely large shed in the garden, which then had a cement base and a large steal bike frame attached. These had been put up before the houses. This shed took up ½the garden. Our remaining paving slabs were being stored on OUR parking spot as we were going to build a bbq, but we were told off for this and they were removed. So we lost money. Our bin is on our parking spot. Others have made bin storage areas, yet that is fine. Skip to now.... the service we receive, or lack of, just continues gets worse. So does the condition of our house. It's NOT built to last. It's damp and full of mould. We've decorated. We've removed the mould countless times, but it comes back. The wall on the stairs is basically green. It's cold and it's damp. My airing cupboard is mouldy. Everything HAS to be in bags to protect it. Guinness had these houses built with what the government now want everyone to have as their heating, one of the heat recovery systems. It been replaced once already, but it still doesn't work. It needs to constantly be turned on, if not water start to run down the bedroom walls. We also have no working shower in the main bedroom and the bathroom, it's covered in black mould. This is because it rely on that same system to take whatever condensation is in there out. But it isn't fit for purpose, and the bathroom has no window being in the middle of the house. We can't fix any of these issues. We pay both rent & mortgage (& all bills) are told we have to fix everything, but we have no rights. The reason we haven't been able to fix anything? Guinness have been increasing our Service Charges & Rent twice a year, every year since we moved in. On top of that, we're then billed for Service Charges Guinness incorrectly estimate every year. They say these will be refunded if the bill turns out to be lower, but this has NEVER happen. The final bill has always been higher. Meaning we've then been left with a final bill for service charges of anywhere from £100-£1k. Thats what we have to pay them on top of everything else, and they always what it in one lump sum. We've been told they will be selling property or are thinking about property in our area, and this could/would include our home. They inform us of this by email, at the same time as informing us of increasing our rent & service charges once more and that we've not paid rent & the extra service charges (if we don't pay them, then they will start the eviction process) we didn't have he normal letter about the extra servos charges and they didn't for some reason take rent from our bank account by direct debit (I checked, and everything is still set up & money was there. This has happened before with them) I wish I had NEVER heard of Guinness Partnership. I would rather have stayed in our 2bed house for longer, fully owning that, being on top of each other than where we are now. Because now we are stuck. I hate this house & I really hate Guinness. I would advise anyone looking at one of their houses, just to run in the opposite direction. Just don't do it.