Selling your shared ownership home

Getting your home on the market

Once we have received your notice of intention (to sell your home), we will review your lease and let you know what options are available to you.

You will be asked to provide documents which could include:

• Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) - If you purchased your home within the last 10 years, it’s likely that you would have access to a valid EPC. You can search the EPC register using the link below
• Valuation Report – You must instruct and pay for your home to be valued. This valuation must be carried out by a Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) valuer. We will send you the details for our panel surveyors, but you can choose to instruct someone different if you wish. You can find more details on their website.

The valuation usually stays valid for 3 months and must be valid at the point your home is reserved by an applicant

• Online ID Verification – We will ask you to complete identity verification using an online portal supplied by Credas. If you can’t complete the online verification, we will discuss other options with you.

If you are selling the property as executor or administrator of an estate following the passing of a shared owner, you will also be asked for the following:

• Death Certificate
• Will
• Grant of probate.

To make your home stand out, we’ll send a professional photographer to capture your home in the best light. They will contact you directly to arrange the appointment.

The images will be sent to us, and we will prepare the property listing.

We will let you know when your home is on the market.

Finding a buyer

We want to provide a fair and consistent experience to all our shared owners so we arrange viewings, but we aren’t able to attend them.

All potential buyers will complete a two-step affordability and eligibility process. This will check that the buyer can afford to purchase the property before moving ahead.

Step one takes place before the viewings and step two will follow after the viewing with a more in-depth check. The second step will only take place if they decide they want to buy the home.

Your property will be reserved when we have a full sign off pack for the assessment, which can take several weeks. We understand that you will be excited to get this step completed and we will work with the buyers to reach satisfactory sign off as quickly as possible.

Continuing a sale

When the buyer has successfully reserved your home, you and the buyer will need to instruct solicitors or a conveyancer to act for each of you in the process. This is known as conveyancing – it covers all the legal work that is needed to sell your home.

This stage in the sale can be a high-stress time, you will be asked to answer many questions with your solicitor. We will continue to support you and your buyer throughout the process. The estimated timescales to complete your sale is 12 to 14 weeks from the memorandum (notification) of sale being sent.

Your solicitor will let you know when your sale is ready to complete. As with viewings, we can’t attend completion and instead encourage you to plan key handover with your solicitor.

When the nomination period expires, you can have an estate agent market your home.

We will let you know if you are able to sell 100% of your home by back-to-back staircasing. This is the process of buying the remaining shares in your home, whilst selling 100% of your home to a willing buyer. The funds will come from your buyer for the remaining shares but you may have other legal costs. 

Once your nomination period expires, so does the requirement to sell your share for a price decided by a Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) valuer. This means that you can market your home at a value of your choice.

If you are selling 100% of your home, you will still need a RICS valuation to calculate the cost of the remaining shares.

Please note, we cannot allow shared ownership homes to be sold at a premium. Estate Agents should not advertise your home with a mandatory premium.

Your estate agent will market/advertise your home, arrange viewings and put forward any offers to you. Once you have accepted an offer, your agent will need to refer the buyer to us for the full affordability and eligibility assessment. When we have approved your buyer, we will continue to support you, and them, through the conveyancing process.