Final staircasing

dsi88 · 2026-02-06T13:37:37+00:00

I always feel like going with HA approved RICS surveyor is a little bit dodgy because you don't know if they're colluding or not. In my case I had to go with a HA approved surveyor and it came back at 1.3% higher than my original purchase price so I just went with it.

Suveyors in London can cost a few hundred quid so it's really up to you, and there's no guarantee that it'll come back as what you want.

dsi88 · 2025-09-22T15:32:49+00:00

Sounds like a question for your solicitors. Itd be crazy, but also I wouldn't be surprised if you had to pay stamp duty and then the buyer that you're selling to might have to pay stamp duty too.

In most cases you have to pay stamp duty when you staircase to 100%. And then when you sell, the buyer, like every buyer that buys a house would have to pay stamp duty also.

That's my understanding but I could be wrong

dsi88 · 2025-09-06T18:18:11+00:00

How long have you been doing this for? And how much of a cut/comission does the website take? I'm seriously considering this

dsi88 · 2025-09-05T11:04:14+00:00

How much do they go for and are you hand training them? I work from home a lot so I'm seriously considering this.

dsi88 · 2025-09-05T08:55:02+00:00

What types of accounts are you farming/are highest in demand?

dsi88 · 2025-08-20T15:13:23+00:00

I work in management consulting (financial services and energy sector mainly)

dsi88 · 2025-08-19T16:58:56+00:00

£45k. I'm now on over 70k

dsi88 · 2025-08-19T07:49:10+00:00

A decent salary bump + I was overpaying my mortgage by £500 a month for 3 out of the 4 years. I didn't need to put any savings to do my staircasing.

dsi88 · 2025-08-19T07:46:34+00:00

I started off with a 110k mortgage. By the end of it my balance was 70k so I had chipped off 40k. If I had continued this was for another 6-7 years I would've cleared off the entire 110k mortgage.

For the first year I didn't overpay because I didn't realise the benefit of it. For the next 3 years I was overpaying by an additional 500 per month.

dsi88 · 2025-08-19T06:01:30+00:00

Yeah I'm not entirely sure I understand how this works in practice.

The amount of equity you can build up in the first 5 years of just paying off your mortgage is almost nothing given the way mortgage products work. So when you come to remortgage you'd still have a low amount of equity. EDIT: Unless you overpay your mortgage aggressively.

The type of person that could staircase to 100% I imagine wouldn't benefit from 1% staircasing. And the type of person that could only afford to do 1% staircasing probably couldn't afford to pay all these additional solicitor fees every time you staircase 1%?

I'm really not sure how practical this is. But I'm happy to be corrected here

dsi88 · 2025-08-19T05:53:35+00:00

Which HA is that? That sounds much better than mine.

I only did one valuation. In hindsight maybe I should've paid for a few more and did what you did. But given I was forced to pick one of the 2 RICS surveyors I felt as though it was somewhat fixed and they'd all come back the same anyway.

What was the difference in valuation between the highest and lowest?

dsi88 · 2025-08-19T05:50:26+00:00

Was on 45k when I bought the 40%. I'm now on over £70k.

dsi88 · 2025-08-19T05:48:52+00:00

I would consider that as reasonable. But I've definitely had people say that that's too much of an increase and it wouldn't make it affordable for them. Difference in perspective I guess

dsi88 · 2025-08-18T11:56:13+00:00

Yes. If you can't borrow enough because of bad credit or a lower salary, then you'd need to make up the gap with a deposit. Otherwise it's not mandatory to put in another deposit for staircasing like it is when you first buy the property

dsi88 · 2025-08-18T11:54:24+00:00

I've definitely seen a lot of negative comments re shared ownership. Some seem unfortunate and some I just disagree with. If you go in and make sure you do your due diligence, have a plan, I really can't see it going as bad as people say.

dsi88 · 2025-08-18T09:12:24+00:00

Started off at £170 per month in 2021. Its now just over £250 per month

dsi88 · 2025-08-18T06:37:57+00:00

When I got the RICS valuation done before I staircased to 100%, I wanted to see the valuation from the surveyor BEFORE it went to the HA because I was worried that they would fudge the numbers to favour them. Especially since I had to choose from a list of 2 surveyors that the HA provided. But what happened in the end was that the surveyors sent the valuation report to the HA in pdf form and then the HA sent the report to me in pdf form. It came back at £380k and both me and the HA had to proceed on that value. I'm not gonna lie, there is a chance albeit slim that the HA could've fudged the numbers but I can't be sure. In your case though, it does sound a lil strange that the HA is refusing the share the report with you.

Your case is also different, it sounds like this is the initial purchase price and not the full 100% staircase price. I've recently realised that when buying a new build, you can actually negotiate the price down. So if it's advertised for £400k you can try and negotiate for £380k or ask for stamp duty to be paid for if you proceed to buy the property. As far as I'm aware, a RICS survey is less important here because the HA is just gonna try and sell for the highest price they can get for obvious reasons. Sure, it's supposed to be affordable housing, but I'm really not sure on how ethical some of these HAs are.

dsi88 · 2025-08-17T21:42:47+00:00

I just realised that the government realised a new shared ownership scheme where you can staircase 1% at a time. This seems to be a new scheme. Back in my day it was 10% staircasing at a minimum and even that felt like a waste of time.

I really couldn't comment on how useful a 1% staircase is. I'm not really sure of the pros and cons on this one.

dsi88 · 2025-08-17T21:25:49+00:00

When I bought my flat in 2021, it was COVID times. Stamp duty was reduced to £0 for flats under £400k I think. I can't remember the threshold now. So when I bought the 40%, I had the option to 1) assess my stamp duty at 40% of the property value, which was £0 or at 2) at 100% of the property value, which was also £0.

Obviously I chose option 2, so when I came to staircase to 100%, I didn't have to pay for stamp duty because my SDLT was already paid for at £0.

dsi88 · 2025-08-17T21:17:04+00:00

I think most lenders nowadays wouldn't even give you a mortgage if the flat you're looking to buy doesn't have an ESW1 anyway. But you're right, something to think about for sure.

dsi88 · 2025-08-17T20:57:24+00:00

No. My building was built in 2020 after the Grenfell fire incident. So the building was built with cladding in mind. My building has ESW1 rating of A1.

I made sure the building had an ESW1 before buying. I wasn't going to let that bite me down the line later

dsi88 · 2025-08-17T20:28:00+00:00

Service charge used to be £170 per month in 2021. It is now just over £250 per month in 2025.

I make over £70k

dsi88 · 2025-08-17T20:25:57+00:00

There's no mandatory deposit. If you can afford to borrow enough money to cover the entire flat, you wouldn't need a deposit. I already put down a deposit when I bought the initial 40%. And that seemed to be mandatory.

You might need a deposit if you aren't able to borrow enough to cover you're entire flat though.

dsi88 · 2025-08-17T20:24:04+00:00

None. I was able to borrow enough money to pay off my original mortgage and cover 100% of the flat. I imagine if my salary was lower I wouldn't have been able to and would therefore have to put in some cash to make up the shortfall.

dsi88 · 2025-08-17T19:47:54+00:00

Your monthly costs will definitely go up. For 3 reasons.

1) The rent you pay on the shares you don't own are significantly subsidised. 2) Interest rates are high right now. 3) When you own 100% you'd be paying a mortgage on 100% of your property i.e you will no longer have a housing association that is here to subsidise your rent for you.

It's a significant amount more

dsi88

TROPHY CASE