Shared ownership schemes have “drastically failed to deliver” affordable homes for first-time buyers, says an MPs’ report.  

These programmes leave buyers exposed to rising rents, uncapped service charges, and disproportionate repair and maintenance costs, claims the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee.  

The cross-party group calls on the government to take “urgent and significant action to reform how shared ownership schemes currently operate so they can deliver an affordable route to homeownership”.  

These homes allow people, often FTBs, to buy a share in a property, usually from a Housing Association, and pay subsidised rent on the rest.  

They require a smaller deposit and mortgage and, in theory, provide a more affordable route to buy a home.  

There are around 202,000 households living in shared ownership properties in England, says the MPs study, citing English Housing Survey estimates in 2019–2020.  

This represents around 1% of homeowners and less than 1% of all households.  

“There is also a limited amount of publicly available data about the shared ownership scheme in general, with little research having been undertaken about its development over time,” the committee says.  

Shared ownership, under various programmes, was first introduced in its current form in the 1980s as a result of the Housing Act 1980. The government’s latest version of this scheme was launched in 2021.   

However, the report highlights the complexity of shared ownership leases and identifies a lack of a single, specialist source of independent and impartial advice for shared owners.  

The committee acknowledges there is broad support for the improvements made to shared ownership leases in 2021 to address issues around costs and service, but notes that these provisions do not extend to shared owners who own homes bought under the previous Affordable Homes Programme, which ran from 2016 to 2023.   

It adds that this risks “the emergence of a two-tier market, where older, less attractive shared ownership properties become more difficult or even impossible to sell”.  

Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee chair Clive Betts says: “Shared ownership was hailed as an answer to the housing crisis especially for FTBs.   

“However, we have found that for too many people shared ownership becomes an unbearable reality, where a blizzard of charges and an unfair burden for maintenance and repair costs means that they are unable to afford full homeownership.  

“Rising rents, hefty service charges, complex leases, disproportionate repairs and maintenance costs are experienced by too many people who take the shared ownership route.   

“The government needs to take clear and urgent action to tackle these issues and ensure shared ownership genuinely delivers affordable homeownership”.