Understanding your Shared Ownership Rent
When buying a shared ownership property, you purchased between 10-75% of the market value, and pay a monthly rent on the rest of the share.
Rent Reviews
The Rent Review Date is set out in the ‘Summary of costs’ document and in your lease. Your rental amount can fluctuate as per the conditions of your lease.
If you are purchasing a new build, if a first sale completion occurs between 1st April and 31st December, the rent review start date is the following 1st April. Completions between 1st Jan to 31st March, rent review start will be the following 1st April.
If you are purchasing a resale property, it will increase in the following April, regardless of where you are in the sales process (e.g. this could be before you exchange contracts).
| Completion Date | Rent Review Start Date |
|---|---|
| April 2025 | April 2026 |
| May 2025 | April 2026 |
| June 2025 | April 2026 |
| July 2025 | April 2026 |
| August 2025 | April 2026 |
| September 2025 | April 2026 |
| October 2025 | April 2026 |
| November 2025 | April 2026 |
| December 2025 | April 2026 |
| January 2026 | April 2027 |
| February 2026 | April 2027 |
| March 2026 | April 2027 |
What do I pay rent for?
Shared ownership homes are leasehold properties. When you part-buy your home, you purchase a share between 10% - 75% and pay rent on the rest to Love Living Homes.
Unlike traditional renting, where repairs are covered by the landlord, this is not the case for shared ownership. Even though only a share is purchased, you become the leaseholder/ homeowner of the property. You are responsible for the property, this includes the upkeep of the property, as if it were owned outright, as per the terms of your lease. You may have additional security with the defect period or warranties, details of which would be covered in your home user guide.
The rent only covers the share of the property you do not own until, not the responsibilities of the property.
To stop paying rent, you would need to staircase to 100%, thus becoming the freeholder or 100% leaseholder of the property.
Shared Ownership
Find out more about Shared Ownership
Staircasing
Find out more about Staircasing
Responsibilities
Find out more about Shared Owners responsibilities
How much will it increase by?
Depending on the conditions of your lease, your rent will be reviewed by reference to either the Retail Price Index (RPI) plus half (0.5%) or the Consumer Price Index (CPI) plus (1%). The RPI or CPI calculations are taken from the Office of National Statistics September published calculations. This will be shown in the ‘Rent Review’ section in the ‘Summary of Costs’ document and in your lease.
Your landlord (Town and Country Housing) will notify you each year what this amount will be in February.
How can you reduce your rent?
When you can afford to, you can buy more shares of your home all the way up to 100% - this is known as staircasing.
There are some associated costs with staircasing but overall, this can reduce your rental outgoings. In more detail, staircasing is the process of gradually increasing your ownership share in a shared ownership property.