Top five tips to successfully manage your shared ownership resales

With Homes England’s Capital Funding Guide highlighting the need for a more structured approach to shared ownership resales, many registered providers are feeling the increased strain on their leasehold teams.

Extensive enquiries, rising customer expectations, and stretched resources are all making managing shared ownership resales a real challenge.

Whether you’re a registered provider looking to partner with an agent to manage your shared ownership resales or considering up-skilling your team to handle it in-house, these five tips will ensure success.

1. Understand and enforce the nomination period

The nomination period, typically 4–12 weeks, is a timeframe set within the lease that provides landlords with the exclusive right to sell the property on the shared owner’s behalf.

By enforcing the nomination period, this secures the sale for you and the landlord, and will protect the property’s affordability. This works by ensuring homes are sold for the value stated within the RICS valuation and will remain affordable for future buyers, crucial in today’s world with property values rising and affordability struggles for many aspiring homeowners across the North West.

If a landlord fails to sell within this timeframe, this can result in the shared owner listing with another agent who is not fully aware of the process and the intricacies of shared ownership resales, which can lead to back-to-back staircasing and risk the future affordability of the property.

2. Educate and communicate

It’s essential to educate buyers about the shared ownership process from the very start. To make the process run smoothly for everyone involved, provide clear information on what shared ownership entails, the benefits and responsibilities, the information that is required and by when.

Pairing this with proactive communication at every stage of the customer journey will manage customer expectations, prevent misunderstandings, improve customer satisfaction, and build trust – all key to delivering a stress-free service.

3. Invest in marketing

While free or low-cost platforms like Share to Buy are available, investing in platforms such as Rightmove will ensure properties reach a wider audience and are sold quickly.

At Redwing, we use a mix of traditional and digital marketing strategies to maximise exposure, including maintaining a waiting list of interested buyers filtered by location and price range; promoting properties on our social media channels; and using targeted marketing when required to ensure a quick sale within the nomination period.

4. Support your shared owners with financial experts

Working with financial advisors who are experts in shared ownership is a huge benefit for your customers.

We work closely with financial advisors so our customers are guided through their mortgage options by the professionals, who also advise when staircasing is the right option, and ensure the financial transaction is managed with ease. This support is key to safeguarding the interests of both your shared owner and the buyer.

5. Partner with an experienced agent

For registered providers without an in-house sales team, partnering with an experienced agent to manage the complexities of your shared ownership resales portfolio can be highly beneficial.

Agents can manage the whole process on your behalf, from enforcing the nomination period and marketing the property, to qualifying purchasers, progressing the sale, and exchanging keys – it’s a seamless experience handled by one team. Partnering with agents who are also registered providers themselves like our brilliant team at Redwing, will also guarantee compliance and affordability protection, providing reassurance that your customers are in safe hands.

At Redwing, we have more than 60 years of experience selling and managing hundreds of shared ownership properties across the North West. To learn more about best practices for shared ownership resales, join us at the Affordable Home Ownership Conference in London on 6 June 2024. Alongside a panel of industry professionals, I will share Redwing’s expert approach and top tips for ensuring success in your shared ownership resales portfolio, from preserving affordability to delivering outstanding service.

Register your attendance here.

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