Selling your home

So that we can advertise your home, you’ll need the following documents:

A valid valuation report – this will need to have been carried out by an independent Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) accredited surveyor.

A valid Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) – An EPC is valid for 10 years. You can check if you already have one on the EPC Register website. Otherwise you can order one from a UK EPC Provider and send us evidence that you’ve done this.

A copy of your lease – If you don’t already have a copy, you can get one from the Land Registry. Alternatively, the solicitor who acted for you when you bought your home may have a copy.

Please note: If your lease has 80 years or less remaining you may find difficult to sell. For further information on lease years, please read our guide: Extend your lease. Alternatively, you can contact our resale and legal team on 0203 815 0060 or resaleandlegal@nhg.org.uk.

Evidence of our consent for improvements (if applicable) – if you carried out improvements and wish to have these considered when you sell, you’ll need to provide a copy of our written consent. We may not be able to consider improvements without this. If you don’t have a copy, contact your Property Management Officer to discuss this.

We won’t be able to advertise your home without these documents.

You’ll need a valuation of your home carried out by an independent, Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) accredited surveyor.

You can use one from our panel, but you don’t have to. If you choose to instruct a surveyor who doesn’t appear on our panel, please let us know so that we can provide them with a copy of our valuation report guidelines.

The surveyor will ask you about the number of years left on your lease, your rent and any service charges.

If you’ve made improvements to your home, the surveyor will need to assess these separately in the report. You must have had our permission to make these improvements or they may not be considered when you sell. For information on home improvements, please read the home improvements guide.

You can also find out more about how improvements affect your home in our FAQ’s section. 

You should make sure that you’re happy with the valuation report and that it will be valid at the point of sale before you send it to us. Valuation reports typically expire every three months, so if it runs out before we can advertise your home, you’ll have to pay for another one.

You’ll need to instruct a solicitor to handle the sale of your home. You may want to use the solicitor that you used to buy the home, or you may want to use someone new.

Whoever you use, we recommend checking that they have experience of dealing with Shared Ownership as this is likely to help the transaction move along more smoothly.

If you don’t already have a solicitor, we have an independent panel of solicitors that you may find helpful.

Fill in the resale instruction form, you will need:

• A copy of your valuation report
• Your Energy Performance Certificate (EPC)
• Proof of consent to any improvements you have carried out (if applicable)
• A copy of your Lease

 Remember, we won’t be able to advertise your home without all of these documents.

Remember that as part of your lease, we have a nomination period of eight weeks to find you a buyer for your share.

Therefore the person selling to you must be prepared to wait until we have found you a buyer for your home or you risk losing mortgage and solicitor’s fees if they decide to pull out. Once a buyer is attached the normal selling process will then take a minimum of eight weeks.

This is an administration fee which covers the costs involved in working to find a buyer for your property.

We will charge you the fee which is listed in your lease. An estate agent would typically charge much more than your resale fee; overall, this fee makes sure that we can continue helping other people onto the property ladder.

We need a valuation from an independent surveyor that has a Royal Institute of Charted Surveyors Certificate because they refer to the government's Red Book which determines the exact value of the property, where as an estate agent assumes the price is open to negotiation.

Estate agents generally add 10% to the price they think a home is worth so that buyers can knock something off. With Shared Ownership the price is fixed so both sides know what they are getting.

We need a valuation from an independent surveyor that has a Royal Institute of Charted Surveyors Certificate because they refer to the Governments Red Book which determines the exact value of the property, where as an estate agent assumes the price is open to negotiation.

Estate agents generally add 10% to the price they think a home is worth so that buyers can knock something off. With Shared Ownership the price is fixed so both sides know what they are getting.

Your valuation is valid for three months from the date of your report. After this you can get an updated report if you need to. If you already have a buyer attached to your property and your valuation expires you do not need to get an updated report but, you can if you choose to.

You were helped to buy your home with public money, which your local authority provides to help people who need housing. One of the conditions of your local authority providing the money was that the home would be offered in the future to the person who needs it the most.

Just as you benefited, we now have a duty to help other people. We currently have a database of people waiting to purchase a shared ownership home. If you decide to sell your home, it is a condition of your lease that you give us the opportunity to find a buyer from our database first.

If no-one is interested in your home after the first viewing, we may still be able to help. People join our list every day and we use a number of online portals as well as work closely with the local authority, therefore we would encourage you to hold another viewing.

If we still can’t find a buyer, we can give you permission to sell on the open market through an estate agent. We will give you advice if this happens. We want to be reasonable, if we can’t find a buyer, we’ll let you know as soon as we can. You can then choose to sell your share through an estate agent or you may be able to sell 100% of your property. It depends on your lease restrictions.

If you sell your share on the open market, we will want to interview your buyer to make sure they are eligible and can afford the payments on shared ownership. We will explain this further if we give you permission to sell on the open market.

We won’t charge our resale fee if you sell this way, but you will have to pay fees to an estate agent if you use one. Please note when selling your share only you must only accept the market value price as determined by the RICS surveyor.

If you sell 100% on the open market, you will need to buy the remaining shares of your property (this is known as ‘staircasing’).

You don’t have to raise the money yourself; your solicitor will use the money from your buyer on the day the sale completes. We will need a valid valuation report on completion to confirm that the agreed sale price reflects prices on the current market. We won’t charge our resale fee if you sell in this way, but you will have to pay fees to an estate agent if you use one.

On some homes, you can never own 100% so you won’t have the option of staircasing to 100% and selling on the open market. This only applies to a small number of homes. Your solicitor should have told you about this at the time you bought your home.