Throughout a prolonged period of uncertainty in the UK, property prices have continued to rise steadily, increasing at a dramatic pace even during the Covid pandemic. But nothing lasts forever and recent market data suggests the boom is coming to an end, leading some to suggest that prices could begin to drop.

Following the end of the Stamp Duty holiday for properties costing over £250,000 on 1 July , there was a substantial 63% fall in residential property transactions – a slump which continued throughout August.

Activity picked up again in September, but many analysts believe this was likely a symptom of forestalling ahead the final Stamp Duty holiday closing, rather than a sign of renewed vigour in the market.

Whether the property boom is coming to an end or not, we must be careful not to take incremental falls, or a slower rate of increase in average house prices to mean that the affordability challenges we face on a national scale, are becoming less significant.

Reframing the debate

It’s important to remember that affordability in the property market is determined not only by the headline price of homes, but by factors including average earnings, interest rates and, importantly, the socio-economic situation in any given location.

Exclusively using average property prices as an indicator of affordability, encourages us to think of the housing market as a single entity, when in reality that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Differing pictures are emerging from town-to-town and region-to-region. The wants and needs of those looking for a home in a Manchester suburb may differ completely to those of someone house-hunting in rural Hampshire. We must acknowledge that there is no catch-all metric for assessing affordability across the country.

Instead, we need to shift our focus towards solving affordability at a local level by tailoring the housing to the specific needs of each area and offering a better mix of tenures to suit those requirements.

Solving affordability at a local level

To tackle the crisis, it’s important that we provide tenure options across the board – from social rent to full ownership – so that those in need of housing are able to choose the solution best suited to their situation.

In this respect, it’s encouraging to see the government devise and promote alternative routes to home ownership, such as the newly implemented First Homes scheme, through which first-time buyers can access discounted market-sale housing.

Likewise, recent moves to reform the shared ownership system affirm Westminster’s confidence in the established alternatives to the traditional mortgage as well.

At Aster, we’ve long been vocal about the merits of shared ownership as a route to owning a home. The unprecedented level of demand we’ve seen for our shared ownership homes since the onset of the pandemic signals that it will play a key role in tackling affordability issues in the years to come.

It’s important the lending industry recognises this. Encouragingly, the evidence from recent years is that more and more mortgage providers are doing so. For example, the availability of shared ownership-specific mortgages has greatly improved but there’s still plenty of potential to grow this market considering how much demand there is for the tenure.

The key here is variety. The housing crisis is complex and means different things to different people, so trying to contextualise it using a single concept such as the property boom fails to serve the needs of everyone affected.

Instead, we must focus on identifying key drivers of affordability at a granular, local level and deliver the variety of housing options needed and, particularly in the case of shared ownership, mortgage products that compliment them.

Amy Nettleton, assistant development director of sales and marketing, Aster Group