Shared Ownership- staircasing or resale?

[micapainter]

Hi, forgive me if I'm not very clued up about this whole process but SO is so complicated and confusing and I find it hard enough to understand all things property related..not to mention my understanding of finances...

I'm currently in a 1 bed SO property in North London and own a 25% share. The full 100% price when I bought it 4 years ago was £140k but has recently been valued at £250k. I want to move out of London back to my home town Norwich and property there is so cheap still that I'm weighing up my options of how best to proceed. Other flats in my block have sold easily and for about the same value. The area is becoming sought after as it's still relatively cheap for London (!). Plus I'm just fed up of never having any money and not being happy anymore in London.

I have heard about back-to-back staircasing which means you can sell the property for it's full value (say £250k) but as you staircase to 100% at the same time you sell it you avoid having to borrow money and arrange a mortgage. It's taken me many frustrated emails back and forth to the HA to find out if this is possible (no one seemed to understand what I meant?- can't wait to get out of this scheme as HA are incompetent) but in the end they said they don't do this as they have a nomination period.

I'm not sure if I can afford to buy the rest of my property as I'm guessing I'd need to get a mortgage for 75% of its current market value? would that be £187.50k?? I am on my own and only earn £20k pro rata (I work in a school).

Or would the best option for me be to sell my 25% share and use the profit from that to put towards a place in Norwich? I've seen 2 bed terraces selling for around £120-150k.

Also I actually don't have a mortgage, my mum took out a loan for me so I pay her so I don't know if that would affect things.

Another option, but it's not allowed, is to rent it out to a friend for a while until I figure out what I want to do. My neighbours all do it and no one checks. But obviously I would prefer not to risk it or even to have the hassle of renting.

Maybe I should go see a financial adviser? If anyone has any advice that would be great. I find it so hard to understand any of it and I'm quite intelligent but money is like another language to me!

[MaverickSnoopy]

I have recently moved out of SO so hope I can help. The outstanding share is now worth £187500 and to buy this you would also need a deposit, usually 10% but sometimes you can get a mortgage based on 5%. However I'm not convinced that you earn enough to get the mortgage that you would need.

I think your best option would be to sell your share. If you sell your share for £250,000 then you will receive £62,500. You then have two options depending on your affordability to a mortgage lender. 1) use the money as a deposit for a new property or 2) pay your mum's loan off and use the remainder as a deposit for a new property. I would suggest using some of the online mortgage calculators to give you a rough indication of how much you can borrow. Caveat that we did this and it was considerably less than what our financial advisor could secure, so you may want to talk to one at some point.

[micapainter]

whoops I sent my reply as a message to you, sorry!
Thanks for the great advice.