Staircasing Explained: Buying More Shares in Your Shared Ownership Home

Shared ownership gets people onto the ladder, but it is staircasing that gets them up it. If you own a share of your home and pay rent on the rest, staircasing is the process of buying additional shares from your housing association, reducing the rent as you go and, in most cases, eventually owning the property outright. It is one of the most common questions shared owners bring to us at Drummonds Finance Group, usually in the form "is it actually worth it?".

The mechanics are straightforward once laid out, so here is how staircasing works in practice, what it costs, and how to think about whether and when to do it. If you are earlier in the journey and still weighing up the scheme itself, start with our shared ownership mortgages page and the general guidance for first-time buyers.

How staircasing works

Your lease sets out your staircasing rights, so it is always the first document to check. When you want to buy more shares, you notify your housing association, they instruct a RICS valuation of the property, and the price of the additional share is based on the current market value, not the value when you bought. If your home has risen in value, each extra 10% costs more than it did at purchase. If values have fallen, staircasing becomes cheaper, which is why some owners deliberately staircase in flat or falling markets.

Once the share price is agreed, you fund it either from savings or, more commonly, by increasing your mortgage. Your rent then reduces in proportion to the share the housing association still owns. Buy your way from 40% to 70%, and the rent falls accordingly. Reach 100%, and the rent stops entirely, the property becomes fully yours, and you can generally sell it on the open market like any other home.

The newer leases: 1% gradual staircasing

The rules depend on when your lease was granted. Older leases typically require you to buy in minimum chunks, usually 10% at a time, with some older leases requiring 25%, and many cap the number of staircasing transactions over the life of the lease. Leases issued under the newer shared ownership model, used for homes delivered through the government's 2021 onwards programme, allow gradual staircasing of 1% per year for the first fifteen years, with simplified valuations and reduced costs, alongside the traditional larger transactions.

Buying 1% at a time will not clear your rent quickly, but it can be a useful discipline, and for owners with newer leases it removes the "I cannot afford a 10% chunk" barrier entirely. Check which regime your lease falls under before making plans, because the difference matters.

Note too that a small number of properties, mainly in designated rural protection areas, cap staircasing at 80% so that the home remains within the shared ownership stock. Your lease will say if this applies.

What staircasing costs beyond the share itself

Each transaction carries costs: the valuation fee, legal work, and potentially mortgage arrangement costs if you are borrowing to fund it. This is why staircasing in many tiny increments under the older lease rules rarely made sense, and why the newer 1% route was designed with lighter-touch valuations. When we help clients plan a staircasing transaction, we look at the whole cost of the move, not just the share price, and weigh it against the rent saving it produces.

Funding the new share: the mortgage side

Borrowing to staircase usually takes one of two forms: further borrowing from your current lender, or a full remortgage to a new lender covering both your existing balance and the new share. Because not every lender operates in the shared ownership market, the comparison is narrower than a standard remortgage, but it is still very much a comparison worth doing, and the staircasing moment is often the natural point to fix the whole loan onto a better rate. If you are mid-fix with early repayment charges, a further advance or a product transfer alongside the new borrowing may beat paying the charge, which is the same product-versus-market weighing we do on any refinance. You can rough out what different loan sizes cost per month with our mortgage calculator before we refine it properly.

Affordability is assessed on the combined position after staircasing, mortgage payment plus remaining rent plus service charge, so a strong recent account history helps. And if family are contributing towards a staircasing step, gifted money is entirely workable here, with the same paperwork as any deposit gift, which we cover in our guide to gifted deposit rules.

Is staircasing worth it?

The financial logic comes down to a comparison: the rent you stop paying versus the cost of the mortgage borrowing that replaces it, plus the transaction costs, plus the fact that you take on more of the property's ups and downs. When mortgage rates are low relative to the rent formula on your lease, staircasing tends to pay. When rates are high, the case is tighter and sometimes waiting is right. Remember too that shared ownership rents typically increase annually under the lease terms, so the rent you are comparing against is not static. There is also a service charge point worth knowing: staircasing does not reduce your service charge, which applies in full regardless of your share.

Beyond the spreadsheet, there are real practical benefits at 100%: no rent, no resale restrictions, the whole market of lenders available to you rather than the shared ownership subset, and a simpler sale when you move. Owners planning to sell within a few years sometimes staircase to 100% simultaneously with their sale, known as back-to-back staircasing, which lets them sell on the open market at full value rather than through the housing association's resale process.

Frequently asked questions

How many times can I staircase? Under older leases, often a capped number of transactions in chunks of 10% or more. Under the newer model lease, 1% gradual staircasing is available annually for fifteen years alongside larger steps. Your lease is the definitive answer.

Do I need a new valuation every time? For traditional staircasing steps, yes, a RICS valuation each time, valid for a limited period. The newer 1% route uses a simplified approach to keep costs down.

Can I staircase with savings instead of a mortgage? Yes, and for smaller steps it is often the cheaper route once you account for borrowing costs. The housing association will still need the valuation and legal steps.

Does staircasing trigger stamp duty? It depends on how your original purchase was structured. If you paid stamp duty on the full market value upfront, no more is due. If you paid only on your initial share, tax can become due once you pass 80% ownership.

Is it worth staircasing to 100% before selling? Sometimes, via back-to-back staircasing at completion, because open-market sales at full ownership are simpler and often achieve better prices. It needs coordinating between solicitor, lender and housing association.

Planning your next step

If you are a shared owner wondering whether to staircase this year, the useful starting point is your lease, a current valuation estimate and a proper borrowing comparison. We can run the numbers with you, tell you honestly whether the rent saving justifies the cost, and arrange the mortgage side across every lender active in shared ownership. Contact us or call 0330 1330034 to talk it through.