Shared ownership staircasing: buying more of your home

Shared ownership lets you buy a share of a home, commonly between 25% and 75%, sometimes from 10% under newer schemes, while paying subsidised rent to a housing provider on the rest. Staircasing is the process of buying additional shares later, reducing the rent as your ownership grows, potentially all the way to owning 100% outright.

It's the part of shared ownership people understand least at the point of buying, and the part that determines whether the scheme works for them long-term.

How a staircasing transaction works

1. Check your lease. It sets the rules: minimum share purchases, any limits on total ownership, and the process. Newer "model" leases differ meaningfully from older ones.
2. Tell your housing provider you want to staircase. They'll set out their process and fees.
3. Get a RICS valuation. The price of the additional share is based on the property's current market value, assessed by an independent RICS surveyor you pay for (typically a few hundred pounds). Valuations usually remain valid for around three months, so the transaction needs to move inside that window.
4. Fund the purchase. Savings, or more commonly a remortgage: you restructure your existing shared ownership mortgage to borrow the extra share's cost. Affordability is assessed as normal, and the housing provider approves the arrangement.
5. Legal work. A solicitor handles the share transfer and the rent recalculation, the memorandum of staircasing. Budget several hundred pounds plus the provider's administration fee.
6. Rent reduces proportionally. Own 50% instead of 25%, and you pay rent on 50% instead of 75%. At 100%, rent stops entirely (service charges on flats continue, as for any leaseholder).

The newer 1% route

Homes bought under the shared ownership model introduced from 2021 typically include the right to staircase by as little as 1% a year for the first 15 years, with reduced fees and a simplified valuation approach. It's designed to make gradual progress realistic rather than forcing you to save up for a 10% jump. Older leases generally require larger minimum steps, often 10%, with full costs each time, check which world your lease lives in before planning.

The costs that make small steps expensive (on older leases)

Each traditional staircasing transaction carries fixed costs, valuation, legal fees, provider admin fee, possible mortgage fees, that don't shrink with the share size. Buying 10% three times costs three sets of fees; buying 30% once costs one. Unless you're on a 1% gradual lease, fewer, larger staircases are usually more cost-efficient. Stamp duty also enters the picture: how SDLT applies to staircasing depends on elections made when you first bought and on the share thresholds you cross, it's genuinely fiddly, and your solicitor should walk you through it before you commit.

Does staircasing make financial sense?

The core comparison is simple: buying more share swaps rent for mortgage payments on that slice. Whether that's a win depends on your mortgage rate versus the rent charged (shared ownership rent is typically set around 2.75-3% of the unowned share's value annually, and it rises over time), plus the transaction costs, plus what property values do. Points worth weighing:

• Rising values cut both ways. Your owned share grows in value, but the remaining shares get more expensive to buy. In a falling market, staircasing gets cheaper.
• Staircasing to 100% transforms saleability. You become an outright owner selling on the open market, rather than selling a part-share through the provider's process. Many owners staircase to 100% precisely to sell.
• Sometimes not staircasing is right. If the rent is modest and your money earns more elsewhere, or a move is coming anyway, staying at your current share can be the rational choice.

If you're considering a staircase, the natural moment is your remortgage date, the borrowing, the valuation and the new deal can be arranged as one piece of work. We do these regularly and there is no Major Money Matters broker fee on standard residential and remortgage cases, the lender pays us a procuration fee on completion.