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A government brand for shared ownership would help tackle confusion
A survey has highlighted issues with shared ownership, but it remains crucial to the UK’s housing provision, argues Amy Nettleton
What are we to make of shared ownership in the current housing market environment?
I have always been a passionate advocate of a tenure that provides high quality, affordable and secure housing to people across the country.
And I’m proud of the role Aster Group has played in raising the profile of the product, and helping hundreds of people get a step on to the property ladder and move into a secure home. We currently have more than 2,000 shared ownership properties in our portfolio and a third of our 11,800-home development pipeline will be under this tenure.
Yet, it’s easy to be concerned. This week, we released our second Another Way report.
As part of it, we commissioned YouGov to survey 200 shared ownership customers across the UK. This uncovered some unnerving trends.
“We discovered a lack of knowledge and awareness even among those who live in shared ownership homes.”
For a start, only 10% had ‘staircased’ – grown their equity stakes – in their properties, with about two-thirds of those who hadn’t citing affordability as the reason.
Alongside this, we discovered a lack of knowledge and awareness even among those who live in shared ownership homes: half (52%) of people do not know they are able to move between shared ownership properties.
Let’s be clear – this confusion about the tenure is not the fault of those who live in shared ownership homes.
It speaks instead of the combined failure of the government and the sector to promote shared ownership and educate people about its benefits.
Our survey showed just 14% of people learned about the tenure via a government website. Compare that with the enthusiastic backing ministers have given Help To Buy, which has its own website.
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Which brings me to what I think is needed to improve the tenure.
Clearly, there are issues about the process of buying shared ownership homes that the sector and stakeholders need to work through.
In particular, the staircasing process could be simplified and customers could be allowed to ‘port’ their mortgages into other properties.
But the key thing, I believe, is awareness and education.
Currently, shared ownership suffers from an inconsistent brand – different housing associations market it in different ways.
A Help To Buy-like government brand for shared ownership would be a huge step forward. This would signal government commitment to the tenure, directing people to a central online portal with all the information they need.
It would also allow housing associations to use the branding in their marketing, on their websites and on the signage outside shared ownership homes.
“Shared ownership suffers from an inconsistent brand – different housing associations market it in different ways.”
We’ve all seen the Help To Buy logo on the signs used by private house builders – it’s enormously powerful and helps with consumer awareness and understanding of the product.
These are all things that are informing the work being done by a National Housing Federation steering group I’m chairing, which aims to agree a collective view on pushing shared ownership forward. We’ll be revealing more on this and inviting views in due course.
Broadly, the government is moving in the right direction.
Sajid Javid, then as communities secretary, talked about how shared ownership can help to alleviate the housing shortage, while the green paper released in the summer namechecked the tenure, including proposals to reduce staircasing options to as little as 1%.
But there were few details on how this would work in practice, meaning it felt like tinkering round the edges.
Nevertheless, in her speech to the National Housing Summit this week, the prime minister has signalled that housing associations have an integral role to play in the market over the next decade. Implicit in this is our sector’s commitment to increasing the number of shared ownership homes.
To briefly return to our survey, it also laid bare the positive impression shared ownership leaves on those who use it: almost two-thirds (62%) would recommend it to a friend and six in ten want more shared ownership homes in their area.
So the system is far from broken. There’s a real opportunity to boost this crucial tenure. We must grasp it.
Amy Nettleton, assistant development director, sales and marketing, Aster Group
