r/SharedOwnershipUK

Curious how many have a sub 1% rent rate?

Hi all,

I own 40% of my shared ownership house and after looking on my HA website I can’t find anything whether a partner moving in with me would be considered a lodger.

My a hole neighbour threatened to report me for having a lodger for 12 months but he is my partner so it’s not really the same as a lodger is it? I don’t make money out of his presence in my house.

Has anyone been in a similar situation? I am scared to call HA now in case they actually consider him to be a lodger.

I’m looking at a 2 bed shared ownership to start saving on rent and build equity, also to have something of my own. The flat is in a premium location so its full value is about £400k and service charges £250 a month. Is it a terrible idea to get a 40% share for £160k (very high-LTV), have a lodger for £1000 a month in the other room, so I can afford living there without compromising on my lifestyle. And after a few years I will sell it to buy a bigger house in the outskirts when I have more money? I feel like I have been wasting money on rent all these years. Am I thinking right or would I waste more on legal fees and other charges while buying and selling? And most people here have been talking about it taking 9 months to sell. I don’t want to fall into a trap. Any advice would be highly appreciated, thank you!

Edit: I will be the second owner, I have already talked to the estate agents and mortgage advisors, and I already have an AiP. The agents are now waiting for my decision. ChatGPT says I’m throwing away money and can’t build equity with my logic.

Hi all,

I’m looking at buying a shared ownership (40%). I’ve noticed the remaining length of the lease is 86 years which seems short (property is only 10-15 years old).

Is this likely to cause me an issue in future if/when I sell? Or can I simply staircase to 100% and own the freehold at which point the lease length is redundant? I’m not sure how much weight lease lengths hold with shared ownerships. Hope this makes sense - I’m a FTB so still getting to grips with it.

Thanks

Id be interested in opinions on this property...
Its not been getting a whole load of interest... Is this the fault of the property or is the Shared Ownership thing just dead now?
We bought it for the same price 10 years ago and there were several people desperate to buy!
Its been a fantastic flat and a great deal for us... I honestly thought it would be an easy sell.
Its a very large garden flat with low rent and service for the area (Wandsworth Common).
Do we just need to go open market?

https://www.sharetobuy.com/properties/666155/?int_source=standard_listing&int_medium=web_search_list&int_campaign=&int_term=property_card&int_content=property_card

Hi all, not a poster on here and due my baby any day now so excuse brain fog or vagueness.

I have a 50% shared ownership on a new build in Greater Manchester - barely even a 10 min bus ride or £10 taxi into the centre of Manchester and a nice little estate. I had this go on sale in March 2026 and the property management company were SO confident this would sell in days. I explained that my baby was due in June and was really hoping it’d be sold by July-August at the latest due to maternity pay being so abysmal etc.

Not a single application of the pathetic 13 that have been submitted so far over the last 8 weeks has met the affordability or shared ownership criteria, so I’ve not had a single viewing. Every month I still own this house, I’ll be in a £400 deficit due to how shocking my maternity pay is (even though I’m a FT secondary school teacher). Of course, me and my partner prepared for some overlap, but I wasn’t expecting to be NO WHERE NEAR selling the house without even one person seriously interested by the time the baby was born.

Is there anything I can do?? I’ve suggested I retake the advert photos as they are pretty bleak, however back then the house had basic (nice) furniture so I thought it was a good representation of what you could do with the space, now all rooms are empty. I can’t use a private estate agent until 12 weeks has passed since the ad went up, which will be July when I have a newborn. I’ll also lose the £300 I spent on a bloody RICS valuation that was compulsory to the property management company.

Any advice welcome, I can’t believe no one has been interested.

Need some help please. Interested in a 25% share of a one bed house. It's an upside down house, wrap around garden, sq foot 610.

I have asked for a copy of the lease which I now have. I have only viewed it once but wanted a copy prior to going any further.

Concerns for me:

Lease 250 years from 2019, 243 years remaining (not a concern). However see next point.

2019 sale price of £58,750 for 25%. 100% value £235,000. Price now listed for 25% £56,250!! Or 100% which is also listed for sale for £225,000. The property has lost £10,000!!

Second concern, rent review RPI + 0.5% upwards only.

Third big concern, exit fee to sell 1.25% of 100% of property value regardless of my share.

Current costs: rent £534.21. service charge £1347.96.

Am I right to be avoiding this? I do like the property but it has lost value??

Thanks

I’ve been browsing this sub for a while and honestly this seems to be 99% negativity, mostly from people who got into something without fully understanding the consequences! So I’ve got a positive post for those looking into shared ownership!

I’ll preface this that we are not in London, we’re in mid Norfolk, roughly 1:30 drive from Stratford (where we usually park if we go to London)

Me and my wife were served a section21 in September 2024, landlord unfortunately got terminal cancer and had to sell FAST, they did however let us stay as long as we needed (private convo which honestly really helped us so much)

We didn’t know what to do, within a few hours we found out and started looking at shared ownership and started making calls.

Between us we earned only about 50k as my wife had only been self employed for 3 years and earnings were still low.Surprisingly we had no issues with her side of earnings or affordability!

We were looking for a house, there were surprising amount of options, about 17 homes across a few new estates not far from where we were. We inquired and got a choice of 6 different homes at this particular site. Housing association were Clarion, homes built by Hills. We initially only wanted same size, 2 bed 2 bath, but we found out we could more than afford a 3 bed 3 bath semi detached with a lovely back garden, drive for 3 cars and lovely side bit of grass as it was a corner plot. The house was 285k full price, we went for 40% as that we had to buy the biggest share we could afford. This was fine with us as after going through the numbers with a broker this was still over £100 less than what were paid renting a 2 bed house!

Service charge was only 52 per month, all looked good! By mid December, we were pretty much all ready, everyone went on a few weeks off however, solicitors, brokers, everyone! When communications restarted at the start of the new year, we were told it would be about 15th of feb when we could complete as the proper has not been handed over due to roads not being finished into that side of cul de sac. We got a call a week later saying they’re ahead of schedule and it’ll be ready for 6th of feb! They booked in a home demo for us, we showed up all exited, whist we were shown around we got an email saying we completed the exchange! Demo lady finish up, gave us the keys and just left. Just like that, we were in our new, empty home! House was amazingly equipped, dish washer, full underfloor heating, amazing bathrooms, 3 good size bedrooms with master having on suite and built in wardrobes. Garden and side of bit grass perfectly level. Honestly we were in love!

Now it’s been a year and a bit later, the home being new, settled in perfectly, no real snags besides stairs getting hair cracks around the seals due to house drying, this was fixed by developers at 1 year inspection! All the neighbours (mix of so, housing association and full ownerships) are absolutely lovely, we got a WhatsApp group for our cul de sac, it’s been amazing everyone is so nice and we all get on so so well even a year later, the chat is blowing up daily!

Big question was going to be service charge! To our surprise, it actually went down from 52 per month to 47 after the first year!

House itself has gone up about 10k in value since we bought according to mortgage company (who knows if that’s true however without rics) but it doesn’t matter as this is our long term home, especially with the space to have kids down the line!

We will likely staircase to 100% when the mortgage is due, as we both now earn a fair bit more (especially my wife as her business now doing incredibly well). But would also be happy staying as we are if needed!

I can’t comment on how it is in London and especially flats. But I cannot recommend the SO from my own experience (and all of our neighbours who did SO as well!) We ended up in such a lovely home that honestly we still sometimes can’t believe is ours!

So if you are looking at SO outside of London flats, don’t be discouraged by what you read here! There are absolutely a ton of success stories, they’re just buried under all the leasehold issues people have!

Thanks for reading!

Just looking for some shared experiences, I placed an offer and got accepted on the 17th December 2025 for a 2 bed 50% share of a property. Nearly 7 months later and I am still waiting on enquiries and search results. Im a second time buyer but there is no chain and the current occupier is moving back with her parents. The more time that goes on, the more I am starting to question my decision. Though as a single parent to 2 young children on a yearly income of £30K my options are limited. I currently live with my parents and have done for 2 years but it is draining and im so desperate for my own space. Is it usual to take this long? Am I likely to have the same issues when it comes to selling in the future? I feel like i am constantly chasing the solicitors for answers and getting nowhere fast. My mortgage offer also expires in 2 weeks and they have already said its unlikely to be completed before then. 😔

Hey team

We’re looking to sell our 30% London SO flat.

We’ve built equity plus deposit for a house which might give us more funds for a house obviously we’ve also saved up as well to boost our house deposit.

For us, pros in staying in our 2 bed flat:

1. Close to work and our lives

Cons:

1. High traffic area so it’s constantly loud
2. Some local alcholics and junkies loitering in the car park at some times
3. Not much good schools around if we do decide to have kids

For me personally, I’m quite happy with our decision with the SO flat as we were able to have a place we call ‘ours’ however it also lost our FTB benefits if we do get a house in further london zones. Within the same breath moving further out will also mean longer commute unless we find somewhere close to Southeastern Rail or Thameslink (ie crystal palace, bromley, etc) and gyms, shops, etc might not be the same as what we enjoy.

Just a stream of consciousness on a Monday morning…

As some will know, certain shared ownership landlords add an “admin fee” to the rent. I was told today that apparently this is not considered a legitimate housing cost for benefits so is excluded when the housing associations report rent to DWP. Anyone else come across this?