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Shared Ownership: SatisfyingAmbitions for Homeownership?Alison Wallace aa Centre for Housing Policy, University of York , UKPublished online: 28 May 2012.

To cite this article: Alison Wallace (2012) Shared Ownership: Satisfying Ambitionsfor Homeownership?, International Journal of Housing Policy, 12:2, 205-226, DOI:10.1080/14616718.2012.681580

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International Journal of Housing PolicyVol. 12, No. 2, 205–226, June 2012

Shared Ownership: Satisfying Ambitionsfor Homeownership?

ALISON WALLACECentre for Housing Policy, University of York, UK

Abstract The extent to which models of subsidised homeownership fulfil the purchasers’ambitions for homeownership is poorly understood in relation to the UK, where the sharedownership - part rent/part buy – model dominates. Homeownership remains highly aspirationaland central to much housing policy, but remains beyond the reach of many households.Consequently subsidised access to the tenure is apparent in many countries with variousrestraints attached on the use and exchange rights that relate to the property. The purpose ofthe paper is to suggest that we should think more critically about the components of tenureand how these are configured in hybrid models of ownership and renting, and how, or if, theseconfigurations sufficiently fulfil expectations of ownership. The paper concludes that partialownership provides purchasers with opportunities to demonstrate they are not Bauman’s‘flawed consumers’, but that these psychosocial benefits may, consciously or otherwise, maskthe attributes of the form of occupancy and ownership that are less well aligned with traditionalhomeownership, such as the control over the management and exchange of the home and assets.The paper contends that the extent to which, and how, shared ownership fulfils expectationsof ownership now and over the long term remains an empirical question for the researchcommunity to explore further.

Key Words: Homeownership, subsidy, shared ownership, tenure, housing assets, psychoso-cial benefits

Introduction

The genesis of this paper lies in a conference paper presented in 2010 (Wallace,2010) which raised the question of whether UK shared ownership – a part-rent/part-buy hybrid tenure – is aligned with common expectations of homeownership. It isclear that subsidised homeownership schemes are more acceptable to purchasers thecloser the models’ fit with purchaser perceptions of what homeownership means(Bramley & Morgan, 1998; Pinnegar et al., 2008). But the question has been insuf-ficiently explored empirically in a UK context. The aim of this paper is to contrastthe circumstances of UK shared ownership with the attributes commonly associated

Correspondence Address: Alison Wallace, Centre for Housing Policy, University of York, York YO104DD. Email: alison.wallace@york.ac.uk

ISSN 1461-6718 Print/1473-3269 Online 12/020205–22 C© 2012 Taylor & Francishttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14616718.2012.681580

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206 A. Wallace

with ‘traditional’ homeownership and consider how, by disentangling what we meanby ‘tenure’, we can begin to determine what is and what is not being delivered throughthese schemes. The purpose is to prompt a more critical examination of the achieve-ments of this sector for purchasers, in the context where the further development ofthe hybrid tenure has served provider and government purposes in cross-subsidisingsocial housing and reducing public liabilities, with minimal attention paid to longerterm resident outcomes.

Over the last 20–30 years, homeownership became the preferable and ‘better’form of residency and citizenship, with the opposite suggested for renters (Ronald,2008). Despite turbulent markets and riskier lending, particularly to some lower-income homeowners, being implicated in the recent financial crisis, public supportfor the tenure remains high. This is notwithstanding the fact that homeownershiphas recently contracted, as access among younger households has been severelyconstrained, and arguably may no longer be thought of as ‘normal’. Credit constraintsin the mortgage markets now mean larger deposits are required, and although wagerises have been sluggish or frozen – prompting real cuts in income – house prices inmany parts of the UK have generally returned close to their 2007 levels. This raisesthe question of whether the opportunities for homeownership are being confined tofamilies with sufficient wealth to support younger members’ first purchases. This alsohas the potential to limit social mobility and exacerbate wealth inequalities betweenowners and renters. Therefore, emerging from the debate about limited access tohomeownership is one that focuses on inter- and intra- generational inequalities(Thomas & Dorling, 2004; Stephens, 2011).

Ideologically, the government remains enthusiastic about homeownership and assetholding. Therefore, the Coalition, like governments before, has sought to mitigatecontinuing access constraints relating to homeownership through housing policiesthat deliver mortgage indemnities to buyers of unsold developments, a re-launchedequity sharing scheme on new developments and an enhanced Right to Buy scheme forsocial housing tenants (Department of Communities and Local Government, 2011).Furthermore, subsidised or ‘affordable’ homeownership will still comprise a fifthof all homes to be delivered through the National Affordable Housing Programme2011–2015 (Homes and Communities Agency, 2011a).

By design or default, homeownership has become central to much social policy,either as a vehicle for, or by holding out the promise of, delivering self-reliance andeconomic wellbeing at lower public costs. Housing policymakers suggest that sub-sidised homeownership schemes provide the opportunity for asset accumulation andmeet unsatisfied aspirations for homeownership, while creating mixed communitiesand generating social housing vacancies as tenants move into affordable homeown-ership (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, 2005). Further, the surpluses generatedfrom outright or partial sales of property – until the market downturn an impor-tant factor in cross-subsidising new social rented housing – were another significantdriver. Many of the above objectives for subsidised homeownership schemes are

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Shared Ownership 207

fiscal, reducing the need for public subsidies in other areas of housing or welfarepolicy. Ensuring effective use of public resources is obviously critical, however thequestion of the experiences and outcomes for those who enter the subsidised sector,and particularly shared ownership, remain under-explored. Of the subsidised owner-ship schemes that have recently taken surplus new build stock off the faltering UKhousing market, Griffith (2011, p. 36) noted:

The benefits for first-time buyers from these programmes is much less clear.Participants will have bought a house (or usually a flat) in which there was usu-ally a strong degree of oversupply, at above market value in a falling market andwith only a partial share of ownership. The programmes were also structuredto give greater selling power to the developer over the consumer. It is hard notto come to the conclusion that the primary beneficiary of these schemes hasbeen the house building industry and not first-time buyers.

This paper, therefore, seeks to re-orientate the debate towards the purchaser andexamine what these schemes deliver for them. As the dominant form of subsidisedhomeownership in the UK, the focus of the paper is on shared ownership. This model ispromoted by housing associations as, unlike shared equity products, it caters for lowerincome households and requires lower subsidies (Moat, 2010). There are evident risksassociated with homeownership and it may be that low-income homeownership per seis limited in its ability to deliver the prominent claims made for the tenure. However,there are distinct structural attributes of the shared ownership model and its multi-party arrangements that demand greater attention if the full range of experiencesand outcomes for shared owners is to be assessed; not least because subsidisedhomeownership has been seen as one way of limiting the widely acknowledged risksof marginal households in the mainstream market (Whitehead, 2010). The paper firstconsiders ways of understanding tenure and subsidised homeownership, and thencontrasts key economic, psychosocial and legal attributes of homeownership withthose that pertain in shared ownership. The paper then concludes with a discussion ofwhether the potential for equity gains and the ability to adopt the epithet ‘homeowner’adequately compensate those who remain in the sector for the limited ability to controland manage their property and assets.

Understanding (Subsidised) Homeownership as a Tenure

Subsidised Homeownership Internationally

Access to homeownership has become problematic in many countries due to de-posit, income or credit barrier constraints and a range of, usually public, subsidiesare deployed to overcome these obstacles for lower income households (Jacobus &Davis, 2010). In the US, in addition to schemes providing fair access to credit orreducing mortgage interest rates, a series of equity sharing models exists, such as

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208 A. Wallace

community land trusts, cooperatively owned housing and equity loans, which aimto lower initial costs and reduce risks, often in exchange for a share of any equityappreciation and restrictions on sale prices to maintain affordability for new entrants(Jacobus & Davis, 2010). In Spain, equity share schemes are also prevalent, provid-ing two forms of subsidised homeownership: VPO (Vivienda de Proteccion Oficial –officially protected housing); and VPT (Vivienda a Precio Tasado – controlled pricehousing), and, in the high-value Basque region, also including restrictions on saleprices to support long-term affordability (Hoekstra et al., 2010). Australia has alsodeveloped a range of models using equity loans/mortgages, shared ownership andsubsidy retention models (Pinnegar et al., 2008) and in the Netherlands, the Koop-garant and Social Koop schemes operate on a similar shared equity basis (Kramer,2008). These various models all aim to lower entry costs and reduce risks by recon-figuring the ways in which the rights, responsibilities and, in particular, the valueof the home are shared between the occupant purchaser and public (or private)providers.

Subsidised Homeownership in the UK

As in other countries, subsidised homeownership takes many forms with nationaland local schemes being offered by public agencies and private developers withvarying degrees of complexity. Generally, however, UK low cost homeownershipdevelopments comprise shared ownership models, where the resident purchases ashare of the property and rents the other portion, which is the dominant model, andshared equity models, where the purchaser buys the full legal title of the home usingan equity loan from an housing association, mortgage lender and/or developer to fundthe part they cannot afford, in return for a portion of any equity gains.

There is a long history of subsidised entry to homeownership in the UK, withshared ownership schemes emerging from the 1970s onwards (Munro, 2007). In2010, the affordable or subsidised homeownership sector represented 5.9 per centof the total social housing stock, and Figure 1 illustrates how the new supply tothis sector expanded rapidly under the last Labour government’s policy of wideningparticipation to ownership (Homes and Communities Agency, 2011b). Over halfof these properties are located in the higher cost regions of London and the SouthEast, and are predominantly one- and two-bedroom flats or apartments on a sharedownership basis where an average of 38 per cent of the property was purchased.

Variations between the different models in the terms of the contract are commonand relate to restrictions on:

• the resale value;• the resale process;• the circumstances of prospective purchasers;

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Shared Ownership 209

Figure 1. Gross new supply of affordable homeownership properties 1999–2010. Source:Homes and Communities Agency (2011b).

• whether equity loans are repaid prior to or at the point of resale of the home;• whether legal title is shared or wholly owned by the purchaser;• whether the property is offered by a developer or public provider;• whether properties are restricted to new build or are available on the open market;• how risks arising from a falling market or negative equity are apportioned; or• the size of the distribution of the shares between the lender, developer, association

or purchaser.

The Structure of Subsidised Homeownership Models

Ruonnavara (1993, cited in Hulse, 2008) contends that there are only two tenures,owning and renting, and that some attributes are necessary – a landlord and a tenantare always apparent in renting, for example – whereas other attributes of tenureare contingent on a time or place, with variance often distinguished by rights ofdisposal, use and control and institutional arrangements. Housing tenure thereforereflects the property and land use rights in each country and is rarely an absolute,rather tenures are historically and culturally contingent shorthand for bundles of useand exchange rights granted in law to manage competing individual and communityinterests (Hulse, 2008; Diamond, 2009).

Figure 2 reproduces a spectrum of subsidised homeownership models showingthat the configuration of subsidised housing models may have varying degrees ofconstraint rendering them closer to either renting or owning.

The depiction in Figure 2 may not accurately reflect all models, as there aresubsidy retention models of shared equity loans in the UK – where restrictions

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210 A. Wallace

Figure 2. Positioning shared equity approaches. Source: Pinnegar et al. (2008) (adapted fromJacobus & Lubell, 2007).

on the resale value to maintain affordability in perpetuity are imposed in variousways, often in rural areas – but broadly the figure illustrates how shared ownership,sold as ‘homeownership’, actually sits somewhere between owning and renting.But what attributes of each tenure are reflected in shared ownership? Furthermore,what is the perceived, and actual, balance of these attributes in this curious hybridtenure?

Structure of the Paper

There are different ways in which the attributes of tenure can be disaggregatedand considered. Tenure or occupancy rights are of course founded on the legalproperty rights afforded to it, but cutting across this are the imagined or constructedattributes we associate with certain material objects or entities. For the purposes ofthe remainder of this paper, three key attributes of homeownership are examined:first, the use, security and accumulation of housing assets; second, the socio-culturalor psychosocial attributes of owning; and, third, the material legal foundation ofownership. For each of these attributes the expectations of the wider market arecontrasted with the circumstances that exist within UK shared ownership. Finally,the paper concludes that partial ownership provides purchasers with opportunities todemonstrate that they are part of the mainstream in terms of housing consumption,that they are not as Bauman suggests ‘flawed consumers’ (Bauman, 1998, p. 38), butthat these psychosocial benefits may, consciously or otherwise, mask the attributesof the form of occupancy and ownership that are less well aligned with traditionalhomeownership, such as the control over the management and exchange of theproperty and assets.

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Shared Ownership 211

The Use and Potential for Housing Assets in Shared Ownership

While economic benefits of homeownership are claimed for the macro-economy andwider communities, it is the monetary benefits associated with homeownership thatarguably attract the most attention. Although asset values have fallen during thecourse of the market downturn, housing equity nevertheless represents an important,and often the only, source of personal wealth for many homeowners. Indeed, net equityin residential property was valued at nearly £2.4 trillion in 2010, representing 166 percent of GDP (Wilcox, 2012). Housing wealth represents the most widely, albeit stillunevenly – in terms of socio-economic group, housing markets and property types –distributed asset class in the UK.

Homeowners recognise this and increasingly act as ‘financialised’ individualsinterested in the investment qualities of their home and what it can offer to theircurrent or future financial or welfare requirements (Watson, 2009). Accumulatedassets can be drawn on during the life course to supplement income or top up pensions(Hancock, 1998), reduce housing costs in retirement (Stephens et al., 2010), or usedto supplement welfare expenditure following critical life events (Parkinson et al.,2009). ‘Progressive conservatives’ maintain that overcoming asset poverty throughhomeownership is central to developing self-reliance, avoiding benefit dependencyand empowering lower income households to take control and responsibility overtheir lives (Wind-Cowie, 2009). Whether these goals are achieved is uncertain, asthese issues may represent new risks to households (Smith et al., 2009) or driveinequality further (Stephens, 2011). It is clear, however, that the investment potentialof ownership provides a sense of stability and security for households (Jones et al.,2006).

Accessing Housing Assets

Like other homeowners, shared owners can accumulate housing wealth throughamortisation of the mortgage and/or capital appreciation, and yet shared owners’access, control and security in terms of their housing assets are constrained. Themodel shared ownership lease in England prevents housing equity withdrawal unlessit is to fulfil the terms and conditions of occupancy, i.e. to repair or improve theproperty, meaning that purchasers have limited control of any assets accumulated ontheir share of the property. Restrictions on the use of accumulated housing wealth area function of the mortgage protection clause provided to indemnify the lenders in theevent of default. The housing association provider has to compensate the lender forany losses and so seeks to control the mortgage exposure of shared owner purchasersand, as a consequence, themselves.

Restricting a shared owners’ ability to use their housing assets could be consideredpaternalistic, in that it limits the shared owners’ self efficacy in relation to the useof housing equity to support activities associated with asset based welfare, such as

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smoothing income fluctuations and providing for household needs through the lifecourse. Conversely, it could be justified as restricting access to routine remortgagingmay increase the sustainability of homeownership. However, while research doesreveal that shared owners have been drawing down equity in some circumstances(Ford et al., 2010), we do not know how these clauses are operationalised by housingproviders and to what extent they interfere with shared owners’ personal financialplanning.

Another use of housing assets is the purchase of equity release products, a nichepart of the mortgage market used by some older people to supplement retirementincome (Williams, 2008). These products are, however, unpopular with lenders as,like shared ownership mortgages, the financial regulator considers them to represent agreater risk and require lenders to set aside additional capital in respect of these prod-ucts. Combined with the restrictions on equity withdrawal within shared ownership,outlined above, the development of equity release products in the shared ownershipsector may remain problematic. Moreover, homeowners also release equity by down-sizing in retirement, but the scope to do so from shared ownership, particularly ifowners have only minority shares in the property, will be limited, certainly within thesame local housing market. And yet, as significant portions of shared owners remainin the sector long term, the number of shared owners in retirement is likely to in-crease and they will be excluded from a major benefit of homeownership -the abilityto use equity in retirement – unless they exit the sector. Restricting the deploymentof housing assets means that any de facto asset based welfare policies founded onexpanding homeownership for lower income households are challenged by the termsof the shared ownership leases that dominate the sector.

Security of Housing Assets

In addition to the restricted access to housing assets, the shared owners’ equity canbe insecure. The case of Midland Heart vs Richardson illustrates the uncertain legalposition of the shared owners’ assets. In this case a shared owner lost control of anyaccumulated equity on their 50 per cent share of the property, as rent arrears existedon the half of the property she did not own, which led to the housing associationseeking possession of the property. On possession the lease was terminated and thepurchaser lost her initial investment and the subsequent uplift in the value of her‘share’, amounting to £75,000 (Bright & Hopkins, 2009). This precarious situationstill pertains, although the housing association regulator requires that purchasers beprovided with a cautionary legal note, there could be important ramifications forother shared owners in the future (Nearlylegal, 2008), not least as the loss of sucha large amount of equity is ‘disproportional’ to the original misdemeanour (Cowan,2011). In practice, housing associations rarely invoke legal procedures independentlyof a lender seeking possession, as lenders often repay rent arrears to protect the

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Shared Ownership 213

asset on which the mortgage is secured (Burgess et al., 2009). It remains, however,an unsatisfactory legal position for shared owners in rent arrears with potentiallyexaggerated consequences, over and above the loss of their home. Indeed, Cowan(2011) suggests that:

the regulation of shared ownership itself has been weighted in favour of theprovider and to give comfort to the lender at the expense of, and with littlethought given to, the buyer.

Risk Reducing/Financial Benefits

Shared ownership has recently been positioned as a potentially risk-reducing product,but it is unclear to what extent this is currently borne out in practice. Shared ownershiphas the potential to mitigate exposure to market fluctuations as the risk is shared withthe provider, which is particularly useful if used by purchasers to avoid over-reachingthemselves financially (Whitehead, 2010). However, to date, shared ownership hasnot always been used in this way. We know the sector has more marginal owners thantraditional first-time buyers (Wallace, 2008), but whether shared ownership representsless of a risk is under-examined.

As mentioned, if a property is repossessed the association refunds any lossesincurred by the lender due to negative equity. However, under the terms of thestandard lease the purchasers then become liable for this debt to the association,so are not protected from negative equity risks, albeit the size of the debt will beproportional to the original share purchased.

Shared owners do have the potential to be protected from high debt burdensand risks to the sustainability of the mortgage payments as they potentially haveaccess to greater support and assistance from social housing providers, unavailableto owners in the wider market. The involvement of a social housing provider maymean that shared owners have access to greater pre- and post- purchase advice, besubject to greater caution at the purchase stage as housing associations undertookaffordability checks in addition to lenders, and some associations offer to buy backshares to increase affordability for struggling owners and have better systems inplace to support owners (Clarke et al., 2007; Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2007;Whitehead et al., 2008). In addition, shared owners can claim housing benefit ontheir rental payments, which is a more generous housing allowance than the supportthey can claim on their mortgage interest payments, although in the event of paymentdifficulties shared owners infrequently access this support (Burgess et al., 2009).

However, high loan-to-income, housing costs in excess of 30 per cent of income,or higher incidences of arrears and repossessions have all been identified in workto date (Bramley et al., 2002; Clarke et al., 2007). Even in the benign economicclimate preceding the 2007 financial crisis, the Survey of English Housing 2003–2006

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214 A. Wallace

indicated that more shared owners were struggling to pay their mortgage (13.6 percent) than traditional first-time buyers (9.6 per cent) (author’s own analysis). In2010, in comparison to the wider market, the sector reported favourable arrears andrepossessions figures (Moat, 2010). However, during the same reporting period for2011 (April 2010 to March 2011) the rate of repossessions in the wider market was0.25 per cent and among shared ownership remained at 0.38 per cent suggestingthis question is unresolved (Tenant Services Authority, 2011; Council of MortgageLenders, 2011).

Echoing comments by Bramley et al. (2002), given the potential for greater support,any indication that the sector performs less well than the wider market with respectto sustainable homeownership is a concern that warrants greater attention in orderto establish the balance between the opportunity to generate wealth and the risksincurred in doing so over time.

Accumulating Housing Wealth

With rent considered to be ‘dead money’, a major benefit claimed for homeownershipis that owners gradually reduce their outgoings and increase their equity and thus itis one of the few leveraged investments available to low income households (Herbert& Belsky, 2008).

Previous studies of low income homeownership have demonstrated that lowerincome owners do accumulate housing equity but they do so at a lower rate. Theyalso exit homeownership more frequently and are less likely to trade up the housingladder or refinance loans to lower mortgage rates (Hamnett, 1999; Belksy et al.,2005). In Australia, Burridge (2010) found that in the housing boom of the late 1980slower income owners made fewer capital gains than higher income households, andsuggested that not only was ownership insufficient to overcome inequalities generatedby the labour market, but that ownership could increase wealth inequalities.

So even if gains are limited, subsidised ownership provides the means to gainsome equity, but to what extent is equity accumulated and these gains sufficient toensure that shared owners enter the wider market and/or tangibly benefit from anynew wealth?

Shared equity and shared ownership purchasers do move on, although the moves areoften associated with increases in household income through marriage or partneringor career graded employment, rather than capital appreciation alone (Jacobus &Davis, 2010; Wallace, 2008). Diamond (2009) notes that some pose the US modelof equity sharing as a second-class form of ownership due to the limited equity gain,but he argues that homeownership has never been unrestricted and shared equitygives sufficient benefits over the alternative, which is not full ownership but renting.However, unlike in the US, there has been no study of housing assets in UK sharedownership, so the equity gains, or indeed the losses, purchasers have made and

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Shared Ownership 215

the impact of property types and local housing markets on asset accumulation inthis sector are uncertain. This last point is pertinent to the use of shared ownershipoptions outside of the higher-value, and at the time of writing still rising, marketsof London and the South East, the limited choice of property available as sharedownership and the concentration of recent shared ownership in new build propertyand the oversaturated apartment market, which has been more vulnerable to pricefalls.

Therefore, with regard to housing wealth we remain uncertain as to the extentof wealth generated in shared ownership schemes, although clearly many ownersbenefited from rising markets, but for those that remain in the sector, access to andthe security of any housing assets is problematic and how risks to the sustainability ofthe shared ownership – and therefore the maintenance of those assets- are managedin practice is uncertain.

Psychosocial Qualities of Homeownership

Regardless of equity gains, homeownership is associated with perhaps nebulous, andcertainly empirically challenging, psychosocial or socio-cultural attributes. Ronald(2008) suggests that the socio-ideological imperatives are as important as the eco-nomic prosperity arguments in explaining the spread of homeownership. Indeed,homeownership has become normalised to such an extent that other housing tenureshave become stigmatised (Gurney, 1999), especially if people remain tenants past acertain age (Edwards, 2005). More profoundly perhaps, homeownership is central toa person’s identity as well as his/her sense of place or belonging, and his/her homecontributes to his/her ‘visions for living’ (Savage et al., 2005). Furthermore, thetenure conveys a sense of pride, status and advancement for many people (Edwards,2005).

Bauman (1998, p. 38) notes the ‘internal exile’ of poorer households fromthe burgeoning consumer society that has parallels for those unable to accesshomeownership:

It is this inadequacy, this inability to acquit oneself of the consumer duties, thatturn into bitterness at being left behind, disinherited or degraded, shut off orexcluded from the social feast to which others gained entry.

Potentially a degree of reassessment of the values of renting and owning is un-derway in the UK, but the commitment to homeownership seems unlikely to abate.Certainly the sentiments outlined by Bauman are reflected in debates surroundinginter-generational inequality and current constraints on access to the tenure. How-ever, people are not duped into their commitments to purchase; rather Bauman notestheir willingness to enter the process (Blackshaw, 2008). Bourdieu (2005) proposeshis concepts of habitus and illusio to encapsulate the issues that dispose people to

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certain market preferences and to project certain cultural signifiers on to the materialaspects of a property. Therefore, goods or products can neither be considered selfevident nor reduced to cultural signs but are a function of the materiality of the thing,its symbolic attributes, within a social context and with specific social actors (Slater,2002, p. 73). Slater provides an example of food, which has multiple meanings todifferent actors (e.g. parents, advertisers and schools), different power relations, classconstructions and traditions associated with it. Houses are an unconventional com-modity, less transitory or ephemeral than Bauman suggests of regular consumptiongoods, nonetheless, outwith their use value; dwellings are similarly imbued with sym-bolic attachments over and above their materiality of bricks and mortar that provideshelter. Homeownership as a form of occupancy of those dwellings is perhaps anexemplar of this process.

In addition to these socio-cultural benefits to individuals, some suggest a rangeof positive outcomes from homeownership both for communities and the widerpublic. The evidence base for educational, citizenship, self-esteem or communities,therefore, has strengths and weaknesses, and it is unclear whether homeownershipis the key variable affecting these outcomes or whether the observed outcomes are aresult of selection effects (Rohe et al., 2000; Brook Lyndhurst, 2006). But if evidencefor societal outcomes for homeownership is uncertain, other cultural associations ofhomeownership with normalised behaviour and status are clear.

Reconciling Reality and Perceptions in Shared Ownership

So what does this mean for shared owners? Shared owners may have gained statusthrough the purchase, the property type and locations but a greater number seemdissatisfied with their housing. Earlier product testing of the new low cost home-ownership options found prospective purchasers largely favoured the schemes asproviding opportunities to ‘get on the ladder’, but had some reservations about thecomplexity of the schemes, the association with social housing and the ability toachieve full homeownership in the future (Thompson & Flanagan, 2005). Althoughnot directly comparable, survey data may point toward a mixed reception amongshared owners regarding these issues. Homeowners are more satisfied with theirhomes (91 per cent) than social renters (82 per cent) and private renters (77 per cent)(Communities and Local Government, 2009a). In contrast, shared owners are lesssatisfied (62 per cent) with the service from their landlord in comparison to generalneeds social housing tenants (81 per cent), although 91 per cent of shared ownerswould still recommend the schemes to a friend (Tenant Services Authority, 2009).The Tenant Services Authority report suggests that the reasons for the significantlylower satisfaction among shared owners could be a result of poor value for moneyand poor responses by the housing associations. However, could there be additionaljustifications for contentment with their homeownership status, and displeasure at the

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landlord services and the connection with social housing evident at once in sharedownership than this managerial explanation?

Certainly we know that there are aspects of the hybrid tenure that are appreciatedand others that are less valued. Bramley et al. (2002) showed that at that timeboth shared owners and shared equity purchasers were generally very satisfied withtheir home and neighbourhood, especially among purchasers who used schemes thatallowed them to purchase from the open market rather than on specific developments.Clarke (2010) found that shared owners considered themselves to be ‘homeowners’,regardless of their often minimal shares in the property, and that they felt theybenefited from a greater social status as a result. However, in other studies, sharedowners’ ‘vision for living’ conflicted with the lived reality. In new-build high densitymixed-tenure developments, where the expansion of the sector has largely taken place,shared owners were the least satisfied with their homes and neighbourhoods comparedto the other homeowner and social renter residents (Bretherton & Pleace, 2008). Ina study regarding mobility in the sector, shared owners also reported neighbourhoodand anti-social behaviour problems as reasons for wanting to move more frequentlythan in the wider market and expressed displeasure at being placed on the samecorridors or within the same block as social housing tenants (Wallace, 2008). Morerecently, a survey found that while 81 per cent of shared owners were satisfied withtheir neighbourhood, 77 per cent viewed it as mixed income but only 49 per centviewed this positively (Tenant Services Authority, 2009). Evidence for the benefitsof mixed tenure varies but is developing (Communities and Local Government,2009b). While mixed tenure developments may be intuitively preferred, it may bethe less well off, rather than wealthier households, who are subject to the mixingwith poorer households with the potential for associated neighbourhood problems(Kintrea, 2008). It seems the mixing of shared owners, regardless of whether they infact rent the largest portion of their property, with social housing tenants challengespurchasers’ ideas and expectations of homeownership.

Without further research we can only speculate, but there is something interestingin the lack of approval for the landlord–tenant relationship and often for placementadjacent to social housing tenants, but support for the product overall and the op-portunity to purchase a stake in the home. Problems may derive from the leaseholdnature of shared ownership and the more apparent landlord–tenant relationship, ratherthan partial ownership itself, which is discussed below. However, the psychosocialbenefits of having a financial stake in a home, and the importance of being able tolabel the form of occupation as ‘homeownership’ regardless of the size of the equitystake may be a more powerful influence on purchasers’ satisfaction with their homeoverall, rather than other considerations such as the restrictions on equity use andthe limitations of the legal contract between housing associations and shared owners.Consequently, entering shared ownership provides purchasers with the ability to be‘normal’, elevating their social position by allowing them to avoid privately renting,

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and therefore avoid association with the epithet, of what Bauman (1998, p. 38) termed,a ‘flawed consumer’.

The Legal Basis of Ownership

This paper’s task is to consider the balance between the two competing tenures ofowning and renting, as reflected within UK shared ownership. This section examinesthe bundles of use and occupation rights that provide a legal framework to this hybridtenure and in the wider homeownership market. As mentioned, tenure rights are his-torically and culturally contingent on a range of factors and the forms of occupationbetween the UK and other countries, and indeed within the UK itself, differ and havea different path dependency. Even within the UK the legal framework varies, as inScotland it is possible to have individual ownership or title of a flatted property orapartment, which has caused difficulties with the management of communal areas forwhich no one assumes responsibility (Robertson, 2006). In Singapore, the exchangerights of owned apartments are restricted and controlled by the government and inSweden co-ownership housing is often considered to constitute a form of home-ownership but arguably could be interpreted as rented accommodation. Generallydefinitions of tenure are not absolute and neither, therefore, are the outcomes derivedfrom them.

The basic tenet of all subsidised access schemes is the relinquishing of someaspect of the purchasers’ use and occupation rights in exchange for lower entry coststo homeownership. The question is how satisfactory are these penalties and doesthe form of occupancy still constitute ‘ownership’ in this UK context? Not only arepurchasers conceding control of their assets and a share of their equity gains in favourof lower entry costs to ownership, their rights to influence and control the buildingsthey occupy are also compromised, which as the sector matures further may becomemore apparent.

English Property Rights Relating to Homeownership

The bundle of rights associated with homeownership is expressed in the legal contractsand title relating to the use of the property, and influences the extent to which theeconomic and social attributes can be realised, but it is far from straightforward.A number of property rights can be characterised as either use (or control) rightsor exchange (or income) rights (Kirkpatrick, 1996, cited in Blandy et al., 2006).Use rights may relate to issues such as possession, management and security, andexchange rights may include the rights to income, capital and the right to transfer.The distribution of use and exchange rights differs across and within various housingtenure. Blandy et al. (2006) note that the rights of ownership contained within Englishcommon property law can be shared with various parties or separated and exercisedby different parties.

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People consider homeownership to offer greater control and security than othertenures (Regan et al., 2001; Munro, 2007; Jones et al., 2006). However, in England,the ability to exercise control over the dwelling differs between the two main principalforms of ownership: freehold and leasehold. The most common form of homeowner-ship enjoys a ‘freehold’ title where there are few restrictions on the use or exchangeof the land and dwelling. The issue of who exercises control and management of theproperty is unambiguous.

However, around 40 per cent of new dwellings in England are leasehold and thereare around one million houses and two million flats occupied on long (more than21 years) leases (Communities and Local Government, 2010). The common use ofleasehold – literally translates as a ‘lesser form of holding’ property – means that these‘owners’ are unable to exercise the control and freedoms culturally associated withhomeownership (Robertson, 2006). The legal relationship is one of landlord and ten-ant, conflicting with leaseholders’ perceptions of their purchases as homeownership(Cole & Robinson, 2000). Indeed, Blandy (2010) notes that the misunderstandingof leaseholders’ individual and collective property rights is reflected in the reclassi-fications of responses to the Survey of English Housing. In 2006/7, 96,000 peoplesaid they held the freehold to their own flat, which is rare, and therefore it had tobe assumed to mean a share of the freehold, and 12,000 said they held the flat incommonhold, a recent form of occupancy setting out joint responsibilities, but only17 cases of commonhold had at that time ever been registered.

Moreover, in multi-owned developments such as new high density estates ‘criticallegal events’ in the development pipeline may have inserted additional clauses intothe lease, further limiting the degree to which long leaseholders can exercise controlas they wish (Blandy et al., 2006). There is a lack of clarity in the law regarding therelationships between developers, owners and managing agents, and Blandy et al.(2006) report that owners commonly expressed a lack of control over the managementof the site. Developers can enter into agreements with management companies andclose ranks on the owners for control of the building. The issue of the control andfreedom associated with some homeownership is therefore complex.

The consequences of exchange may also vary between freehold and leaseholdproperties, as, aside from housing market fluctuations, the leasehold is a ‘wastingasset’. Leases may commonly be granted for 99 or 125 years, but the value falls asthe number of remaining years reduces and in practice once the remaining periodof the lease approaches 60–70 years the property may not offer suitable security fora mortgage (Council of Mortgage Lenders, 2012). Leaseholders have the right tonegotiate a new extended lease with the freeholder but at a cost.

English leasehold reform has been informed by the desire to better reflect the con-cept of homeownership than did the landlord–tenant relationship of freeholders andleaseholders that pertained a decade or so ago (Cole & Robinson, 2000). A Right toManage,1 leaseholder enfranchisement2 and a new commonhold3 were introduced toovercome conflicts between long leaseholders’ actual position and their perceptions

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of what should constitute ownership (Robertson, 2006). However, problems remainin reconciling individual ownership and collective responsibilities towards the man-agement and maintenance of flatted or apartment buildings if insufficient provisionis made in any new governance arrangements (Robertson, 2006).

Shared Ownership Property Rights

As noted, the law surrounding leasehold properties is complex and shared ownershiponly serves to cloud issues further. The limited provision within the shared ownershipleases for access to, and ownership of, accumulated housing assets has already beendiscussed, but there are also issues about the governance and management of theshared ownership properties that could give rise to concerns.

To avoid over-complicating the discussion by outlining the detail of the variouslegal structures of shared ownership schemes, suffice to say at this point that sharedowners of apartments, i.e. the majority of new entrants to the sector, do not enjoy thelegal rights to the leasehold reforms regarding the management of their buildings,enfranchisement and lease extension mentioned earlier until they have incrementallypurchased, or ‘staircased’ up, to 100 per cent ownership.

The right to manage excludes leaseholders of local authorities or charitable housingtrusts, so shared owners have similar legal circumstances to leaseholders of otherformer social housing properties. Restrictions on leasehold enfranchisement arisefrom the policy desire to preserve properties as affordable in pressured housing areasin perpetuity. So some shared owners will be unable to staircase to 100 per centand/or be unable to exercise their right to purchase the freehold (Communities andLocal Government, 2009c). Shared owners also do not have the legal right to extendthe lease, although the Housing Corporation (2004), the social housing regulator atthat time, issued advice that associations should extend leases when requested todo so.

The issue of the legal restrictions on equity use has been discussed but a minoritystake in a leasehold property may have further ramifications. Cole and Robertson(2000) note the value of examining tenure discourse and meanings behind the com-monly assumed concepts, noting in their study of flat owners how many leaseholderswere living under the mistaken assumption, as the ideology of homeownership wasstrong, that they were not tenants. Low cost homeownership products, particularlyshared ownership, have also been constructed as a ‘homeownership’ commodity,despite being leasehold properties with frequently low entry equity stakes. Arguablytherefore, as shared owner leaseholders they are not only subject to the power ofthe (housing association) freeholder and have limited control over the property (Cole& Robertson, 2000; Robertson, 2006), but they are tipped even further towards thestatus of tenant as they rent part (or usually most) of their home.

It is uncertain how, or whether, the lack of rights associated with long leases affectsshared owners. Leaseholders in the wider market seldom exercise these rights as the

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collective management of the shared spaces and property remains, and disputesmay still occur between flat owners who have conflicting ideas about the level ofinvestment in the property and standards of management. The issue may be moreproblematic for house purchasers who may never expect to have their rights curtailedat all.

Although there are no legal mechanisms for shared owners to decide how theirhomes should be managed, housing associations are meant to facilitate shared owners’participation in decision-making. However, in a recent survey of shared owners,40 per cent had no opinion, did not know, or were neither satisfied nor unsatisfied,with the opportunities to engage, although 50 per cent were satisfied or very satisfiedthat the housing association provided opportunities to involve them (Tenant ServicesAuthority, 2009). The most widely known tools of involvement were feedback onquestionnaires and tenant/resident associations but only a third of respondents notedthese existed, and 37 per cent were not aware of any mechanisms. This suggests thatopportunities to exert control over the property may be limited and not well developedin the sector. Again this may become of greater concern as the sector and propertiesmature.

As mentioned, over the last decade the mortgage protection clause indemnifyinglenders from losses in the case of default is a routine inclusion in shared ownershipleases. However, this was not always the case, meaning lenders may now be reluctantto mortgage these properties in the future unless the leases are varied (Beeson, 2011).

Shared owners also have 100 per cent responsibility for undertaking repairs andmaintenance to the property, regardless of the proportion of the property they own.This means the purchaser can exercise control over the timing, contractor and ex-tent of repairs, thus reflecting the position of traditional homeowners. However,product testing shows that potential purchasers consider this requirement to be un-fair (Hoskin, 2007), which conflicts with their desire to be considered homeownersbut further reflects concern at the imbalanced settlement between providers andpurchasers.

One difficulty is that the sector has been developed as a transitional tenure, a‘stepping stone’ or ‘foot on the ladder’ (Wallace, 2008). Constrained control of theproperty or asset withdrawal may be of less importance if the intention is to live thereonly a short while and use the accumulated equity to fund a deposit on the openmarket. However, 21 per cent of existing shared owners have lived in the propertybetween 11 and 20 years (Tenant Services Authority, 2009) so the control over theassets and the long-term management of the properties may be a greater issue forlong-term residents in the sector. Some of the limitations of the shared ownershipmodel may arise from the use of the shared ownership lease and Bright and Hopkins(2009) suggest that there are other legal forms of occupation such as co-ownershipthat may circumvent some of the issues raised. Lenders and customers prefer theshared equity model of housing, but in England the shared ownership model persists,with all its complexities and flaws.

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Conclusions

The paper discusses the attributes of tenure that policymakers and purchasers associatewith homeownership and considers whether shared ownership, the dominant modelof subsidised homeownership in the UK, can deliver these qualities. By framinghousing tenure as a bundle of qualities capable of being configured in different ways,we see that achieving the qualities of homeownership may be more problematic for ahybrid tenure such as shared ownership. Even minority stakes in leasehold propertyhave been constructed as ‘homeownership’ and therefore the purchases can satisfyresidents’ socio-cultural ambitions for the tenure, but we can see that the control ofthe property and assets can be limited and shared ownership may be less successfulin delivering these other aspects of the tenure than people expect.

Other researchers are also considering these issues (see Bright & Hopkins, 2011),and without the rapidly rising markets of previous periods masking potential weak-nesses in the model, it is important that they do. Matters regarding asset accumulationin local housing markets and sub-markets – the use and control of assets through thelife course; the management and continuing maintenance of properties, often involv-ing multiple public and private parties; and the sustainability of the sector involvingthe tripartite system of management by lenders, owners and the housing associa-tions – all require further research to achieve clarity in what the sector offers andachieves. This would inform international discussions regarding the potential forlower income homeownership, either instilling greater confidence that the sector isadequately serving the purchasers throughout their occupancy or providing a basisfor switching support to other subsidised or revised models and/or tenure.

Shared ownership remains an important component of UK housing policy, andindeed is reflected in other countries, but there is an urgent requirement to examinefurther the potential disconnect between the ability of purchasers to exert controlover their assets and management of their property and their common expectationsof homeownership. Currently the drawbacks seem mitigated only by a powerfuldesire for purchasers to assert themselves as ‘homeowners’, a position which wouldotherwise escape them.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Professor Janet Ford, two anonymous referees, and all thosewho gave me valuable feedback on earlier drafts of this paper and associated researchproposals.

Notes

1. The right to manage (RTM) introduced by the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act2002 gave long leaseholders the right to join together to take over the management of

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the premises containing their flats (Department for Communities and Local Government,2009).

2. The right for leaseholders of flats to join together to buy the freehold of the buildingcontaining their flats and certain associated property (collective enfranchisement) wasintroduced by the 1993 Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act andamended by the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002, which sort to removeobstacles to enfranchisement.

3. Commonhold was also part of the Leasehold and Commonhold Act 2002. It is a new typeof property ownership designed to be an alternative to the long leasehold system. It isessentially freehold ownership of individual flats, houses and non-residential units withina building or an estate. The rest of the building or estate forming the commonhold isowned and managed jointly by the flat or unit-holders, through a Commonhold association.Ownership is not limited to a number of years, which distinguishes it from leaseholdownership (Leasehold Advisory Service, 2010). 1

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