TEACHERS do not want to live close to the schools where they work, according to a housing association struggling to sell ‘key worker’ flats at a grade I-listed 1930s block, writes Kim Janssen.
Isokon in Lawn Road, Belsize Park (pictured) has been renovated at a cost of £4 million to house ‘key workers’ by the Notting Hill Housing Trust.
Despite being on the market for more than a year, seven of the 25 flats offered for sale on a shared-ownership basis remain unsold, although ten have been sold in the last three months.
Last October Camden NUT blamed the cost of the small studio units for the slow take up.
But a spokesman for Notting Hill Housing said: “One of the problems is that teachers often do not want to live close to where they work.”
Eligibility to purchase the flats has been repeatedly extended and now includes NHS staff, police, town planners and social workers in Barnet, Enfield, Haringey, Islington and Westminster as well as Camden.
Under the shared-ownership deal, key workers use a relatively small mortgage to buy a quarter share in the property and pay rent on the part they do not own.
With a 25-year mortgage a studio flat would cost about £587 a month all in.