Shared ownership: what it actually costs, and what happens when you sell

The listing says £75,000 for a 25% share of a £300,000 flat, and for the first time in about three years the deposit looks like a number you could actually reach. That's the appeal, and it's a real one.

What's worth knowing before you go further: shared ownership lowers the price of getting in. It doesn't usually lower what you pay each month, and it changes what happens when you want out.

Almost everything written about it is published by the people selling it. Here's the version that isn't.

What you're actually buying

You're buying a leasehold interest in part of a home. Not a joint stake with a partner who shares the bills.

Shares run from 10% to 75% of full market value, though most sit in the usual 25% to 75% range. Your deposit is 5% to 10% of the share, not of the whole property, which is the entire point of the tenure. On that £300,000 flat at 25%, roughly £3,750 to £7,500 rather than £15,000 to £30,000.

Eligibility is capped by income: £80,000 a year or less, £90,000 in London, and you have to be unable to afford a suitable home outright. First-time buyers qualify, and so do former owners, people forming a new household after a relationship breakdown, and existing shared owners moving. Caps as at September 2026.

Two things people consistently get wrong:

You are a leaseholder, with a leaseholder's full obligations. The government's own response to the Select Committee on shared ownership put it plainly: the arrangement "involves the usual legal obligations, including full liability for the costs of maintaining the home". Not a quarter of the liability for a quarter of the flat.

The rent isn't a temporary bridge. It's a permanent feature of the tenure until you own 100%, and most owners never do.

The three costs, and the one that surprises people

You pay all three at the same time, every month.

1. A mortgage on the share you bought.
2. Rent to the landlord on the share you didn't.
3. The service charge, in full.

The rent is set as a percentage of the value of the landlord's share. On a new-build shared ownership home the cap is 3%, and most landlords charge 2.75%. On a resale, your starting rent is whatever the previous shared owner was paying.

Run that through the flat above. You own 25%, the landlord owns £225,000 worth, and at 2.75% that's £6,187 a year. About £515 a month in rent, on top of the mortgage on your £75,000 share, on top of the service charge.

And the service charge is the one that catches people. You pay 100% of it regardless of your share. MHCLG has said so directly: shared ownership "can often become unaffordable over time due to having to pay for 100% of repairs and maintenance costs despite only owning a proportion of the property". If the block needs a new roof, your quarter share doesn't cut your bill by three quarters. Worth reading separately on what's normal in a service charge and what's a red flag.

The English Housing Survey shows what all that adds up to. In 2024-25 shared owners spent 23% of their income on housing costs, against 19% for people buying with an ordinary mortgage. Lower than private renters at 33%, but higher than the thing shared ownership is sold as a step towards. The entry price is lower. The monthly cost usually isn't.

What the rent does over the years

It goes up, and it builds you nothing.

Leases signed before 12 October 2023 rise by RPI plus 0.5%. Leases signed on or after 12 October 2023 use either RPI plus up to 0.5%, or CPI plus 1%. Both are built to run slightly ahead of inflation, every year, for as long as you hold the lease.

None of it buys you any more of the property. Which isn't a criticism, it's rent, and rent is what you'd pay a private landlord too. But only the mortgage part is the stepping stone. The rent part is the same money you'd have spent renting.

Staircasing, and what each step actually costs

Buying more of your home is called staircasing. The rules are better than they were, and still more expensive than people expect.

Most leases let you buy 10% or more at a time. Older ones sometimes insist on 25%, newer ones allow 5%. Buy on or after 1 April 2021 and you can also take 1% a year for the first 15 years, with no rolling an unused year forward and no 2%, 3% or 4%.

The pricing is where the arithmetic bites:

So on anything above 1%, if the property has risen since you moved in, every further slice costs more than the last. Rising prices are good for the part you own and bad for the part you're trying to buy.

Then the costs, which recur every time:

• A RICS-registered valuation, which you pay for and have three months to act on before it needs redoing.
• A landlord admin fee of roughly £150 to £500 on shares of 5% or more. None on a 1% purchase.
• Legal fees, plus a mortgage arrangement if you're borrowing more.

There's a stamp duty decision too, taken at purchase rather than at staircasing. You either pay once on the total market value of the property, or pay on the first share and nothing further until your share passes 80%. Take the staged route and the moment you cross 80% you owe SDLT on that step and every one after. Ask your conveyancer to price both routes.

How many people actually reach 100%

Very few. And there are official numbers for it, rather than the guesses that get repeated online.

In 2024-25 there were 4,781 sales across England where low cost home ownership equity reached 100%, up 35% on the year before, a third of them in London. In the same year, 18,603 new first-tranche shared ownership sales were completed by large providers and councils. Set that against a stock the English Housing Survey puts at 252,000 shared ownership households, up from 161,000 in 2019-20.

So under 2% reach full ownership in a year. Those two figures come from different official series, one a survey and one an administrative return, so take it as the scale rather than a precise rate. The direction isn't in doubt: far more people enter shared ownership each year than leave it by owning outright. Plan on being a shared owner for a long time, and treat staircasing out as upside.

Selling: the part that gets skipped

If you own less than 100%, you're not selling a flat. You're selling a share of a lease, to someone who also has to qualify for shared ownership and get a shared ownership mortgage.

• You have to tell your landlord you want to sell.
• The landlord gets a nomination period of 4, 8 or 12 weeks depending on your lease to find the buyer themselves.
• A RICS valuation is required, you pay for it, and the price can't exceed current market value.
• The landlord may charge you a fee on the sale, and you pay your own legal costs.

None of that makes selling impossible. It makes it slower and narrower than an open-market sale, and your exit depends partly on how well your provider handles resales. Ask about that before you buy, not after.

The newer leases are genuinely better

If the home is funded under the 2021 to 2026 Affordable Homes Programme or the 2026 to 2036 one, the lease is materially better:

• A minimum term of 990 years, which takes the whole short lease problem off the table.
• A 10-year initial repair period where the landlord covers eligible essential repairs, with up to £500 a year claimable towards them.
• A minimum initial share of 10%, down from 25%, and staircasing from 5% plus the 1% a year option.

Older leases get none of it. Two flats in the same development, sold three years apart, can sit under quite different terms. Which model yours follows is a day-one question.

What to ask before you commit

1. Get the key information document and read the cost pages first. Providers have to give you one before you reserve.
2. Which lease model is this, and what's the term? New-model 990 years with the initial repair period, or a legacy lease. That one answer moves several of the numbers above.
3. What percentage is the rent, and which review formula applies? 2.75% or 3%, RPI plus 0.5% or CPI plus 1%. In writing.
4. What's the service charge now, what was it three years ago, and what's in the reserve fund? You're liable for all of it, and the trend matters more than today's figure.
5. Are major works coming? New-build doesn't mean no major works, and you pay the full charge for them.
6. How long is the nomination period, and how many resales has this provider completed here in the last year? Slow resales are a real cost to you later.
7. Price a realistic staircase. Today's value, a few plausible years of growth, and the full cost of a 10% step including valuation, admin fee and legal work.
8. Ask your conveyancer to run both SDLT routes on your actual figures.

All of that is answerable before you pay for a survey. And research the block and the area with the same care you'd give a full purchase, because your liability for the building is identical.

The honest summary

Shared ownership does the thing it says on the front. It gets people into a home who couldn't otherwise buy one, on a deposit that's actually reachable. That's not nothing, and 71% of shared owners say they're satisfied with the tenure.

What it isn't is a cheaper way to own. You'll typically spend more of your income on housing than someone with an ordinary mortgage, you carry 100% of the building's costs on a fraction of the equity, and the odds of staircasing all the way out are low enough that you should plan as though you won't.

Buy it because the alternative is renting indefinitely, not because someone called it a stepping stone. It's a place to live with a landlord attached.

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This is general information, not legal, financial or mortgage advice. Scheme rules, rent caps and lease terms differ between providers and between funding programmes, and the figures here are as at September 2026. Check the key information document and take advice from a conveyancer experienced in shared ownership before committing.