01 / 40 · The House · Mixed use
Shop downstairs, family upstairs.
A corner shop with a flat over it is the British immigrant house. It is also the file Islamic books reject more often than the timeline admits.
The Mizan desk · 7 September 2026 · 8 min
Mixed-use is where home finance meets commercial: a ground-floor A-class, a maisonette, a surgery with a flat. Conventional lenders have specialist books for this. Islamic HPP criteria are mostly houses and flats in England and Wales, with new-build flats already capped harder (Gatehouse: 75%). A shop with a family over it is often a no before the scholar is asked.
If the rent downstairs is a business, the plan upstairs is not a standard HPP.
Split the uses
If you occupy the whole, you want a home plan. If you let the shop, you have a commercial element — different risk, different zakat, different screening if the trade itself is mixed. Some files can be carved. Many cannot. Do not let a broker force a standard HPP onto a commercial title because the family sleeps upstairs.
Leasehold, cladding, and ex-local-authority already sit in the too-hard pile. Mixed-use is that pile with a till in it.