What shared ownership staircasing costs, and how it works

Staircasing means buying additional shares in a shared ownership home you already part own. Each new share is priced on what the property is worth at the time you buy it, not on what you originally paid, which is why staircasing gets more expensive as the market rises.

How much you can buy at once

Most leases in England let you buy shares of 10% or more at any time. Some older leases set the minimum at 25%, and some newer ones allow 5%, so the first thing to check is your own lease rather than a general guide.

If you bought on or after 1 April 2021 you may also have the right to buy 1% a year for the first 15 years. You can't buy 2%, 3% or 4%, you can't carry unused years forward, and the landlord can't charge an administration fee on a 1% purchase.

The 1% route is priced differently from everything else. It uses your original purchase price adjusted by the House Price Index rather than a fresh valuation, and the landlord supplies that figure at least once a year or whenever you ask.

The valuation sets the price

For anything beyond the 1% route, a surveyor registered with RICS values the property and the landlord sets the price of the share from that valuation. Your landlord will tell you whether they instruct the valuer or you do. Many housing associations insist on instructing it themselves and won't accept one you commissioned.

Improvements you made with the landlord's written consent are excluded, so the share is priced on the unimproved value. Without that written consent you pay on the current market value including work you funded yourself, which is an expensive way to discover that consent mattered.

Most valuations are valid for three months. Miss the window and you pay for a fresh one, and in a rising market the new figure is usually higher.

A worked example

Say you bought a 40% share of a flat priced at £250,000, and you now want another 25%. The RICS valuer puts the current value at £290,000. The table below shows how that share is priced.

The £40,000 rise in value has added £10,000 to the price of the share you're buying. You now own 65%. The equity you already hold acts as your deposit, so you don't have to find fresh cash for one, which is the part of staircasing people most often miss when they assume it's out of reach.

The fee stack

On top of the share price, budget for the RICS valuation, your solicitor, any mortgage arrangement or valuation fees, and the landlord's administration fee. Government shared ownership guidance puts that administration fee at roughly £150 to £500, set by the landlord. L&Q, as one published example, charges £290 including VAT and has frozen its fees until 31 March 2027.

Ask your landlord directly whether you'll also be liable for their legal costs on top of your own solicitor's bill, since this varies between housing associations and isn't something to assume either way. Budgeting guides put total fees for a straightforward staircasing transaction at around £2,000 on top of the share itself, though that varies with location, value and the size of the share you're buying.

Stamp duty and the 80% point

How stamp duty works here depends on a choice made at the original purchase. If you made a market value election, you paid on the full market value up front and no further stamp duty falls due on staircasing, though a return is still required when you take the freehold or the full leasehold interest.

If you didn't, you paid on the initial share, and HMRC's guidance on staircasing where no market value election was made says each further acquisition is exempt while your total holding stays at 80% or below, and that transactions taking you above 80% are chargeable.

In the example above, moving to 65% triggers nothing. A later step to 100% crosses the threshold and is chargeable, so the second move carries a stamp duty bill that the first didn't. These rules apply in England and Northern Ireland. Scotland and Wales run their own property taxes. Tax depends on your circumstances and your lease, so check the position before you commit.

The mistake worth avoiding is staircasing in small steps in a rising market. Every step is priced on a fresh valuation, so three separate 10% purchases spread over six years can cost meaningfully more than one 30% purchase today, and you pay the valuation, the legal fee and the administration fee three times instead of once.

Compare quotes from conveyancers for shared ownership legal work before you commission the valuation, because the three-month clock starts the moment it's issued.