Getting a mortgage for shared ownership is not necessarily harder, but it is more specialist than a standard residential mortgage. Not every lender offers shared ownership products, so the choice of lenders is usually smaller.
Lenders will still assess affordability in the normal way by looking at your income, outgoings, credit history and deposit. The key difference is that they also include the rent payable on the share you do not own, along with any service charges and other housing costs.
For many first-time buyers, shared ownership can actually make getting onto the property ladder more realistic because the deposit and mortgage are based only on the share being purchased rather than the full property value.
Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage.
You may have to pay an early repayment charge to your existing lender if you remortgage.