Shared ownership -Buying part of our rented house.

I'm after some advice if anyone can help, we currently rent a house from my mother-in-law, we pay the going rate for it. The initial plan was for my mother in law to buy it and we would rent it and gradually buy it off her in 'bits' as it were, as we could not afford to buy it ourselves.

We have been in there 9 months now and I am looking into buying the first bit of it, prob between 30-50% of it.

This is where my query is, I have read I may be liable for stamp duty if the stake is over the threshold as it is a property purchase. Also is there a mortgage out there that will allow us to do this, all shared ownership mortgages seem to refer to housing associations as the 'other' stakeholders. After all it is effectively that same thing we want to do (I.e. Pay mortgage on our part and continue to rent the rest)

Also if we bought a percentage this would make us part owners so would have our names on the deeds at the land registry.

[Bri w]

We looked into something very similar a few years back. Its not that straightforward, so best see a Solicitor who knows about shared equity/lease purchase. Note, not in your case but there are some Landlords who set up to do it but don't like to sign lease purchase agreements... be wary.

It is unusual to be part buying from a relative, so it is unlikely that the bank will have mortgages pre-setup for this. Might be best To talk to a lender (bank or building society) directly, and see what they can sort out.

One other bit it might be worth investigating (though I have zero experiance of this) is shared ownership through a company. I know this is how the freehold on houses split into flats are usually bought, not sure about shared ownership of houses though. goes something like, register a company which owns the house entirely. You can then buy a share of the company with a mortgage secured against that share in the company. Then it doesn't matter who owns the other shares of the company (in this case your mother-in-law). Should also mean that you are liable for maintenance bills to a percentage of ownership (though I am not an expert/lawyer)