Selling your existing Guinness home Learn more

We'll get everything ready like checking your lease and asking our photography company 99 Home Ltd to call you.  They'll arrange an appointment with you to take photographs and draw a floorplan of your home.

Viewings are arranged directly between you and any interested buyers who complete an enquiry form on your property listing.

When a buyer submits an enquiry form on your property listing, this will come to you by email so that you can arrange a viewing with them directly.

Ask your buyer to submit an application form following their viewing. We'll ask a mortgage broker to check they can afford the monthly repayments. When they've been approved we'll write to you by email.

We will instruct both sets of solicitors, you and your buyer should liaise with your solicitors to progress the sale. We’ll be on hand to offer advice along the way, but most of the negotiations will be done between your respective solicitors.

Your solicitor will be able to let you know once all the conveyancing has been completed.

What Guinness pay for

We utilise a company called 99 Home Ltd to arrange for photography of your home and to advertise your home on Rightmove and Zoopla. Guinness will pay the cost of this directly to 99 Home Ltd.

What you'll need to pay for

• A valuation survey report written a Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors member
• Energy Performance Certificate - approx £45
• Our solicitors fees - £390
• The resale fee mentioned in your lease. (If there is no mention of a fee in your lease we will charge £1,200 if your home sells within the nomination period or £540 if your home sells after the nomination period.)
• Your solicitors fees

The average time it takes to sell a home in the UK is twelve weeks.

However, this can all depend on many factors, such as any legal, survey or communication problems. So you should always be prepared for delays to occur.

Most Shared Ownership leases give us a period in which to find a buyer for the property. Our standard nomination period is eight weeks.

Depending on what your lease says, this is the length of time you are required to allow us to offer your home to our waiting list of buyers.

The nomination period starts from when we receive a fully completed instruction to sell your home.
If your lease doesn’t require you to do this, you can usually sell your home on the open market straight away.

If at any time the information provided is found to be incorrect, the expired nomination period will be considered invalid and will start again when correct information has been submitted.

Any efforts to frustrate the sales process, such as not allowing viewing of your home, will also render the nomination period invalid.

We used public money to help fund your home, and we need to ensure this is protected to help others in the future. One of the conditions attached to this funding was that the home would be offered in the future to another eligible person.

Just as you benefited, we continue to have a duty to help others find a home.

We have a database of people waiting for Shared Ownership homes, and if you decide to sell your Shared Ownership home, it is a condition of your lease that you give us the opportunity to find a buyer.

If we can’t find a buyer, we can give you permission to sell on the open market through an estate agent. We will provide you with 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.

We will market your property on our website and to our waiting list of buyers within five working days of receipt of your instruction to sell and photos from 99 Home.

We do maintain a waiting list of people looking for Shared Ownership homes. Different buyers will have different requirements of course, but we will contact any who have expressed an interest in properties that match the description of yours.

New customers can join our waiting list at any time, and these will also be provided with information about your property if it meets their requirements.

You must ensure your valuation report is valid for three months.

After this, you can get an updated report if you need to, but the Valuer can charge you a fee for this.

You might want to ask them about these fees when you initially instruct them as sometimes sales can take longer than three months.

If you already have a buyer interested, you may decide to carry on with the existing value, but they may pull out if you get another valuation and the price changes.

You can advertise your property independently if we are unable to nominate a buyer within the nomination period.

This would mean that you would still be offering your property on Shared Ownership terms, so any buyer would still have to be approved by us and meet the shared ownership requirements.

We charge a separate fee for this, which you would be responsible for paying.

It is important to note that, if we are unable to nominate a buyer and you do attempt to sell on the open market, this is subject to a 12-month limit. So if you fail to sell during that time, we will require the nomination opportunity again after 12 months

Yes, we can. If you wish, we can continue to offer your home to our waiting list of shared ownership buyers while you also try and sell on the open market. If we’re able to find a buyer in that time, the same fee will be payable as if we had done so during the nomination period.

We require 10 full working days in-between exchange of contracts and completion of the sale to process all memorandums and issue notices.

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.

When you have sold your home, make sure you have a firm arrangement with the buyer about where they can collect your keys – you should only hand these over when your solicitors get the money for your home. It’s a good idea to leave the keys with your solicitor or a trusted friend or relative. We cannot look after or pass on your keys for you.

Yes, as soon as you've got a buyer for your home you can make an application to purchase a new home.

You should have been provided with a copy from your solicitor when you purchased your property. Alternatively, you can get a copy from your mortgage lender or from the UK Land Registry website.

Your lease will state what shares were initially purchased when it was granted. If you have bought any additional shares since then, your solicitor should have registered these with the Land Registry. So you can check there or speak to your solicitor.

This is to cover our overheads incurred in managing the whole resale process, operating and maintaining a computerised database, approval of mortgage offers and checking eligibility. Overall, this fee makes sure that we can continue helping other people onto the property ladder.

If you're not happy with the valuation you receive, you will need to discuss it with your Valuer. We will only accept the Valuer’s decision, however.

In most cases, we will just refuse to approve the buyer. This will result in your sale falling through and everyone losing any fees they have already paid. You are responsible for understanding the terms of your lease, so it is vital that you follow this.

In rare circumstances, we may permit the sale to proceed. However, due to the fact you have breached your lease, you will be required to pay a charge of £3,000 or 1.5%, whichever is the higher, of the sale price for 100% of the equity.