In this section:
Shared Ownership is a government-backed scheme that helps people buy their own home by purchasing a share in the property and paying rent on the other part.
This means a smaller deposit and mortgage is requested when buying a home in the standard way.
Key things to know about Shared Ownership:
Home ownership
You own a share of the property and pay rent on the rest.
Deposit
The deposit needed is a minimum of 5% of the property share you’re buying.
Mortgage
You need to be financially qualified to buy your share of the property.
Household income
Your household needs to earn less than £80,000 per year (£90,000 in London) to be eligible.There are slightly different schemes for Shared Ownership UK-wide, but this information focuses on Shared Ownership in England.
If you’re eligible, you can apply for the Shared Ownership property that you’d like to buy. It’s easier than you may think; you purchase a share of between 25-75% of your new home, using your deposit and a mortgage, and pay subsidised rent on the remaining share.
The other part of the home is owned by a housing association or housing development company, like Places for People, this is who you’ll pay rent to, and Shared Ownership homeowners can buy more shares in their property later, if you wish, in some instances up to owning 100% of your home. This is called ‘staircasing’. The more shares in the property you own, the less rent you need to pay on the remainder.
With Shared Ownership, the lower deposit and mortgage repayments helps people get onto the property ladder sooner, rather than later.
This is an example and drawing is not to scale. The share level purchased can vary between 10% - 75% depending on affordability, and lenders deposit will also vary.
If you’re considering a Shared Ownership property, use the calculator below for an indication of the deposit amount you’ll need, along with an estimate of your monthly costs for mortgage payments and rent.
Using our calculator can help you better understand the estimated costs of buying a property with Shared Ownership, to help you decide if it’s a good option for your circumstances.
Here’s the information you’ll need for our Shared Ownership calculator:
In addition to your monthly costs for mortgage repayments and rent on the share of the property that you do not own, you will also need to factor in the service charge for your property, details of which are available from the Sales team at the Places for People development you’re interested in.
Please note that the figures provided by the Shared Ownership calculator are approximate and are based on an estimated monthly rent of 2.75% of the share the property company own, but this figure can vary across developments.
Places for People is not authorised or regulated by the Financial Services Authority to provide financial advice so you should always seek expert advice from an Independent Financial Advisor in relation to mortgage products, interest rates and affordability before committing to a mortgage application or buying a property.
Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on a mortgage.
Find out more about the Shared Ownership process and what to expect if you choose to buy a home through this scheme.
In order to buy a home under a Shared Ownership scheme, you need to meet the eligibility requirements, as well as pass the affordability checks.
Who is eligible for Shared Ownership?
You also usually need to meet one of these requirements:
You will need to have a deposit (at least 5% of the share you want to buy) and – if not a cash buyer – be able to take out a mortgage for the remaining cost of your share.
You’ll need to find out if you’re able to take out a mortgage for the amount needed. This will depend on your income, affordability checks and your credit history. Every lender has their own criteria and ways in which they measure affordability and the ‘risk’ level of applicants. Our independent financial advisors are Shared Ownership specialists, so with Places for People you’re in good hands. Find out more about Shared Ownership mortgages.
There are developments all over the country offering Shared Ownership properties to eligible homebuyers. So, that brand-new home could soon be yours.
If you’re looking for a new-build property through Shared Ownership, these are some of our most popular developments.
Popular locations:
While there are many Shared Ownership benefits for homebuyers, it’s important to understand all aspects of the scheme before deciding if it’s the right option for you.
Read more about the Shared Ownership pros and cons.
Along with Shared Ownership, another popular government-backed affordable housing scheme was the Help to Buy Equity Loan, where buyers were able to borrow a portion of the deposit needed to buy a home to help them get onto the ladder. This scheme has been discontinued since 2022.
There are also Help to Buy ISAs, a type of savings account where first-time buyers can save for their first home, and the government will add a free 25% bonus to the savings when used for a property purchase. New Help to Buy ISAs were discontinued in 2019, but many people have existing Help to Buy ISAs that they continue saving into, and can do so until 2029.
Help to Buy ISAs can be used with Shared Ownership if you are eligible for the scheme. If you have an existing Help to Buy ISA and want to use it to buy a Shared Ownership property, you must do so before November 2030 in order to claim the 25% bonus towards your deposit.
A new Shared Ownership model started in 2021 for properties being sold through the Government’s Affordable Homes Programme and is being phased into new developments from 2022 through to 2026. It includes some changes to the way Shared Ownership works.
Shared Ownership available on homes until 2023
| Minimum deposit | Minimum share of property for sale | Minimum 'staircasing' | Who covers repairs | Exclusivity period for landlord to sell |
| 5% of your share in the property | 25% | 10% share each year | You are responsible for carrying out repairs | 8 weeks |
NEW Shared Ownership available on homes from 2022
| Minimum deposit | Minimum share of property for sale | Minimum 'staircasing' | Who covers repairs | Exclusivity period for landlord to sell |
| 5% of your share in the property | 10% | 1% share each year, with reduced fees | You receive support from your landlord for essential repairs for 10 years | 4 - 8 weeks |
In addition to repaying a mortgage on the part of the Shared Ownership property that you own, you will also need to pay subsidised rent of between 2.5% and 2.75% on the other share.
For example:
Another example is if you own a 75% share in the same property, the rent will be £1,375 per year, or £114.58 per month.
If you staircase the share of your Shared Ownership home all the way up to 100%, you will no longer pay rent, as you will own all of the properties.
If you want to sell your Shared Ownership property, it may be worth more than when you bought it, depending on the housing market at that time. If your home has increased in value, so has the share that you own.
It’s important to note that any profit you might make on a Shared Ownership property is proportionate to the share that you own. For example, if your property is sold for £20,000 more than when you bought it and you own a 50% share, your share of the profit is £10,000.
House prices can fall as well as rise, so it’s important to know that you are not guaranteed to make a profit if you sell a Shared Ownership home.
It is usually not permitted for a Shared Ownership homeowner to rent out their home. It may be possible to take in a lodger and rent out a room to them, but the owner of the property must also live there and the whole property cannot be rented out to someone else. This information will be on your lease when you buy a Shared Ownership home.
If you ‘staircase’ your share in the property up to 100% and therefore own all of the home, you may be able to rent it out. However, this will depend on your mortgage lender’s policy and them giving you ‘consent to let’. This is a formal agreement from your lender that will give you permission to rent out your property for a limited period of time and is often only available in certain circumstances.
Shared Ownership is very popular with first-time buyers, but anyone who meets the eligibility criteria can potentially purchase a home through the scheme.
If you used to be a homeowner but no longer own a property, or are in the process of selling it, and can’t afford to buy another property through a standard purchase right now, you may be eligible for Shared Ownership.
If you’re already a homeowner through Shared Ownership, you can usually buy a different property through a Shared Ownership scheme to move to.
The eligibility requirement relating to maximum household income (£80,000 per year or £90,000 in London) applies in all cases. If you think that you are eligible for Shared Ownership houses, you can speak to the team at your nearest Places for People development to find out more.
The Stamp Duty minimum threshold is currently £250,000. If the property value is lower than this, you will not need to pay any Stamp Duty when purchasing your home.
If the property value is higher than this (up to a maximum of £625,000) and you are a first-time buyer, you can claim First Time Buyers Relief, which means you won’t pay any Stamp Duty on the first £425,000 of the property, and 5% on the remainder.
If you are not a first-time buyer, you will pay 5% Stamp Duty on properties of a value £250,001 - £925,000.
With Shared Ownership, because you’re only buying a share of the property, you will only need to pay Stamp Duty when buying the home if your share is valued above the threshold. If you buy more shares in the property through ‘staircasing’ in the future, then Stamp Duty may become due if this takes you over the threshold.
Depending on the specific scheme, Shared Ownership in England enables you to purchase a share usually between 25% and 75% of the property’s market value.
It’s worth noting that with Shared Ownership, you pay a subsidised rent on the share of the property that you do not own, so the lower the share that you buy, the higher the monthly rent payments will be, alongside your mortgage repayments.
With ‘staircasing’, you can increase the share that you hold of the property over time, if you wish. It is usually possible to staircase up to 100% if you choose to.
A Shared Ownership deposit is usually a minimum of 5% of the value of the share in the property that you are buying. However, this will depend on your individual circumstances, which you will be able to clarify when you speak to an independent financial advisor.
For example, if you are buying a 50% share in a property valued at £200,000, your deposit will need to be at least 5% of the £100,000 for your share, which is £5,000.
Another example is if you are buying a 60% share in a property valued at £350,000, you’ll need a deposit of £10,500 (at 5% of your share, which is £210,000).
As a homeowner of a Shared Ownership property, you can redecorate and make most cosmetic changes to your home. However, some major alterations or structural changes may need permission from your housing association, and might be subject to local planning laws.
Examples of changes that are usually acceptable
Examples of changes that can require approval and other permissions
Guidelines on what is and isn’t acceptable will be outlined in your lease.
If you staircase the shares in your home up to 100%, there will usually be no restrictions on the changes that you can then make to the property, subject to your local authority’s planning laws (i.e., for making structural changes).
You are able to buy more shares in your Shared Ownership property, either in increments of a single 1% upwards or in chunks of 10%+ at a time.
This flexibility means that if your financial situation improves over time and you are able to borrow more on a mortgage or use savings, depending on the development you may be able to increase your percentage share of ownership all the way up to 100% . Plus, the larger the share of the property that you own, the less rent you will pay on the remaining share.
All homes under a Shared Ownership scheme are sold as leasehold.
This means that the buyer is given the right to live in the property for a set number of years, but the land itself belongs to the freeholder, which will be the house developer or housing association.
The lease is a contract between the freeholder and the leaseholder (the owner of the Shared Ownership property), but if you staircase the share of your home up to 100%, you may also be able to buy the freehold of the home, as the ownership is no longer shared. This can be discussed with the team when you buy your Shared Ownership property.
There used to be a restriction on the size of property available to Shared Ownership applicants, which was a maximum of one bedroom more than the current household size required. However, that is no longer the case; you can now apply for a home with any number of bedrooms, as long as you can afford the property.
Most Shared Ownership homes are developments including houses that have two, three or four bedrooms, meaning that there are options suited for many households, both now and in the future.
Before applying for a Shared Ownership property, you should:
The next step is to find a Shared Ownership property that you want to apply for by looking at Shared Ownership developments and homes for sale in the area you want to buy.
You can then register your interest and the team will get in touch with you to discuss it further.
There are usually some eligibility and affordability checks to be done before you can progress further with the application.
If your application is approved, you can reserve your new Shared Ownership home and start the homebuying process!
