Shared Ownership Staircasing

Little_Bunny

Hello,

I hope someone can please help me to determine whether I can staircase on my property or provide advice on whether I should stick at 50% for the time being. My circumstances are as follows:

1. I originally bought 50% of my property where the full market value was £377,250. The mortgage is now £96000.
2. I would like to staircase to 100% (obviously lol) but my lender has told me via a soft search they can only potentially lend me a further £150k on top of the current lending I have.
3. My employment situation is currently I am a contractor but I only started contracting last May but then took a 3 month holiday to travel for October until January and have been in my new contracting role for about 3 weeks. It is 3 to 6 months, however I have been in this field for 5 plus years. My boss seems to like me and wants me to go permanent which ultimately I want to do for the security, but is the reason why I am stressing trying to staircase whilst my salary is higher as a contractor as I easily surpass the 45% ratio. The problem is whether or not the short length of time I have been contracting full stop is enough to staircase.

So my main question is can I staircase to 100% or if not 75%? I believe my flat is no more than £390000 (I will try to argue it lower if I can due to prices falling, but really I just want to staircase as quickly as possible to stop paying rent). Using £390K as a guideline, dividing by 2 gives £195000 but adding this to £96K gives £291000. Since £96K plus £150K is £246K, it seems I have a shortfall of £45K meaning I can’t staircase doesn’t it. Sorry I know this might be simple to people out there but I get confused with my equity and all that, but if the above is correct, I guess I cannot staircase to 100% without having £45K in cash as a second deposit? I will also need to pay the stamp duty too. Please can someone confirm this is correct so I can get over the idea I can staircase to 100% at least for the time being now ;(.

So I do believe I can staircase to 75% simply because the potential £150K figure my lender could lend me is more than another 25%, but obviously won’t cover another 50%. But does anyone know whether based on my employment history the HCA will pass me on the affordability calculator, as in the length of time contracting because I am certain I pass the 45% ratio.

Hopefully you got to the end of that :T lol, I would be most grateful for any advice. Otherwise would it be better to just keep pushing my current mortgage down and then trying to staircase to 100% say in another year or so. The problem is that I ideally want a permanent job then as I hate jumping from contract to contract despite the money being better. I just feel damned if I do and damned if I don’t although I appreciate I don’t deserve sympathy seeing as I chose to do SO!!!

Anyway thanks for taking the time to read this,

LB