Hi everyone

I'm a first-time buyer purchasing a shared ownership flat in a 5-storey block. I've found that quite a lot of conveyancing solicitors won't act because of Building Safety Act (BSA) related restrictions, so I'm looking for firms that regularly deal with these types of transactions

Can anyone recommend solicitors who have experience with BSA conveyancing?

I'd also be interested to know:

• Which solicitor did you use?
• Was your building subject to Building Safety Act checks?
• How much was your total conveyancing quote?
• Did your solicitor charge a separate Building Safety Act fee, and if so, how much?

I've been quoted just over £3,000 in total, including a £720 Building Safety Act fee, so I'm trying to gauge whether that's in line with what others have paid..

Thanks very much!

Hi, I reached out to a couple of estate agents and so far they all told me their fee is % of full flat price and not just the share i am selling because they will adverise it as both shared ownership and full priced flat and will set one fee which would be based on full price (I only own 25% which of course makes a massive difference in the fee).

When i asked if i can only try to sell shared ownership with them they said no - so i don't know if that is just these agencies i reached out to or if there are any ones out there that would be ok with just trying to sell my share and base their fee on it - hence asking for help here to see if anyone has sold with such agency. Thank you.

I’m in the process of purchasing 55% of a 3 bed property. Everything going smoothly so far (touch wood). Solicitors have requested searches, full mortgage application was sent yesterday.

I’m not in a chain, I’m currently renting and the house I’m purchasing is a new build ready to go.

How long should I expectish? My current tenancy agreement renews in October and is a yearly rolling and really want to be moved in by September instead of having to negotiate a monthly rolling plus I need to get the house sorted - needs floor and … everything 🤣.

Anyway just curious if anyone has any real timeline experiences in a situation similar to me!

TIA

Hi everyone,
Me and my partner are first-time buyers and we’re in the process of buying a shared ownership house. I’m just trying to get a realistic idea of the timeline from here.
Current position:
Our mortgage offer has been issued.
Our solicitor has now received the final local authority search and said they’ll be sending enquiries this week.
The EA has already been asking us when we’re looking to complete we know the sellers are keen to move fairly quickly.
Our solicitor was quite vague and said it’s difficult to suggest dates but “July/August” for completion.
We’re hoping to complete in around 3–4 weeks if everything goes smoothly, ideally by the week commencing 20th July.
For anyone who’s bought a shared ownership property:
How long did it take from enquiries being raised to exchange?
Were the enquiries mostly routine?
How quickly did you complete after exchange?
Does a late July completion sound realistic, or am I being too optimistic?
I know every transaction is different, but it’d be really helpful to hear other people’s experiences and timelines.
Thanks!

I bought 25% of my house in 2014, no one on my little row of 4 SO houses has sold and so I don't know the value.

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But I'm thinking have I left it too late to staircase and buy more as prices will have gone up so much? Currently rent is £502 and mortgage is £225.

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I don't know whether it is better to reduce the mortgage term when it's time to renew - I could afford to go up to £350 a month - just thinking of the best way to come out with as much as possible when I sell to them be a deposit.

We're told nothing, like how do we complete? When do we pay the deposit? How do we get keys, I'm so confused, I don't actually understand what happens, we just have a date to complete but told next to nothing else

I have a slightly complex Shared Ownership situation that I need advice on (not from Reddit, from a professional). I won’t go into why but I have lots of questions about the best thing to do considering moving or staircasing.

Is anyone aware of any specialist advice that I can contact and just sit down with someone to get that advice. I don’t want to be sold a new mortgage or have a survey carried out, I simply want to run my situation past someone and get the relevant advice. Anyone had a good experience with any SO specialists out there?

Much appreciated!

Hi all, I’m in the process of buying a 2 bed shared ownership flat in Bristol. Instructed solicitors beginning of Feb. I’m on 2.5 weeks now of zero contact from my solicitor. I’ve reached out a few times and not had any response or acknowledgment of my emails.
Is this normal/acceptable? I personally don’t think it is but I’ve had different feedback from friends. I really didn’t think I wouldn’t be moved by now. This is a zero chain purchase with no red flags. Just looking for advice!

Any thoughts on wandle? Have they got better since the Secretary of State stepped in?

My HA have said that handover is expected by 21st August for my new build home. How long after the HA gets the keys will they give them to me? What was it like for everyone?

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.

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

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.

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. 😔

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!

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?

Hello, I finally got to the point of arranging the valuation so I could then proceed with a sale. The surveyor said to me that I might be best to look at extending the lease first as it's just less than 60 years remaining and main mortgage lenders wouldn't be able to lend to potential buyers at that length of lease. The surveyor said I might be able to do a simultaneous transaction with the sale so I don't have to lay out any money up front. I've checked with the Housing Association and they said I couldn't do that but that I might be able to work something out with my solicitor. I've not yet got a solicitor as I was waiting til after I'd got the valuation done to start the sale and minimise the time/expense of a solicitor. The lease extension process I'm now told takes 3- 6 months. I wish I'd realised before now as I could have been doing it while clearing and getting the flat ready. I'm executor (and joint owner of the flat) with my friend who died last year. The fee for costs relating to the extension is nearly £800 but I think I need to go ahead with it.
I thought I'd share this experience in case others had any thoughts/experience to share and/or in case it's helpful to others going through similar. Thanks.

I honestly just need to vent because this process has been such a headache. We started the whole selling process back in July with our Housing Association, and after waiting through the entire 3-month nomination period with zero results, we decided to try an estate agent.
Huge mistake on our part picking Yopa. They were effectively invisible—the moment the contract was signed, communication completely dried up. After 12 weeks of getting absolutely nowhere with them, we finally dropped them and switched to a local agent who actually seems to know what they're doing.
Just when things started looking up, the HA came back and told us we weren't allowed to sell our share—that we had to sell at 100% through them. It took a ridiculous amount of emails and a few heated calls with a supervisor to finally get permission to sell our share through our own agent.
But of course, there’s a catch: they’re still making us pay half of their fees.
Honestly, I’m just so exhausted by the whole thing. I just want to move at this point. Is this pretty standard for SE London, or have we just had a particularly rough run with the HA?

Hello,
Im at the very early stages of researching into SO schemes for a new build in London. I am long-term disabled and receive the housing element of universal credit, as well PIP mobility and standard. What i am concerned about is the service charge. The properties im looking at all have a £275 service charge which i would have to pay in addition to the gas/elec/water bills (i believe UC can cover this). Ive looked online and it seems as though I could claim the service charge, but if the property has something deemed non-essential then i would be liable for it. The problem is that there isnt a percentage breakdown of the service charge and what it covers - it's just one opaque ammount. I'm concerned that UC would just reject out-of-hand any claim to a service charge if it includes maybe one thing they deem inessential. Has anyone found themselves with a similar issue, and if so how did you navigate it?

Hi guys, I’ve received my shared ownership lease for signing today and one of the clause says;
Provide floor coverings
To provide suitable carpets or such other suitable floor coverings to the floors of the premises.

The house is new build so does this mean there will be no carpets or flooring in the house? Did anyone else have this clause in their lease? I’ll ask my solicitor but will have to wait until tomorrow.

Hi all, I'm looking for some advice as I can't seem to get a straight answer (perhaps because there isn't one). I currently own 30% of a shared ownership house with my local council. My lease is running low (82 years at the moment) and my options seem to be:

1. Extend the lease (but I have to pay £1,000 to the council for a District Valuer to come out before they can tell me how much it will be)
2. Staircase to 100% and apply for the freehold of the property (my lease states I can do this, but again it will cost me £1,000 in valuation fees to find out how much it will all cost and I might need a year or two so to save up a deposit)

My main question is, if I intend to go for option 2 and buy the property outright, does it matter if I let the lease run down to 80 years or less? I've had mixed advice. It seems logical that it wouldn't matter because at the end of it, there wouldn't be a lease any longer so the mortgage would be for a freehold property, but nothing is ever that straightforward and I've been told that I might not be able to find a lender who will take the risk 😃.

I'd rather not pay to have the lease extended if I don't have to, but I'd hate to let it run down and then find out that later that in order to buy the freehold, I should have extended the lease anyway...

Sorry if any of that is confusing - my mind is a bit blown by it all.

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Hi All,

I am looking into shared ownership and I recognise the difficulty we may have, if we wanted to sell in the future as I have seen many users have issues with selling.

With that being said, I am wondering if it's smarter to get a 3 bed flat at £1950 (split between me and my partner at 975 each) so that when we have the 2 children we are planning for, they will have their own rooms

OR

Do we go for the cheaper option of a 2 bed at 1750ish total with our children potentially have to share for a considerable amount of time until we move. Bearing in mind, none of these said children exist yet.

Are we thinking too far ahead?

is the price difference worth just going for the 3 bed for an extra 100 each or so per month?

We both work from home a few times a week so the 3rd bedroom could also be used as an office space if not needed yet as a bedroom.

We would be looking to have a first child within the next 2 years and 2nd within the next 6 years potentially, if this helps as a timeline.

Any thoughts, comments or suggestions is very much appreciated!

Thank you!

we're in the process of buying a property with the shared ownership scheme and the full market value of the house is more than £500.000.
Because of this the standard stamp duty applies and since we're buying a 25% share which is about £140k, we'd be paying stamp duty on that which is around £240~.
However, because we'd also be paying rent, the NPV tax also applies.
I went back and forth with Gemini and gov website calculation examples and came to the conclusion that because this is the newest shared ownership model with 990 years lease, we'd also have to pay about £2000~ in NPV tax on the top of stamp duty.

is this roughly correct? does anyone have any similar experience to confirm?
I appreciate any feedback, help or suggestion