Inside Housing – Home – Is shared ownership worth reforming?

Politicians of all stripes claim to be the champions of homeownership. 

Voters have good reasons to be sceptical. Despite previous promises, house prices have raced ahead of earnings, to the point where very few young people have much hope of getting on the ladder without support from mum and dad. 

There is a very simple reason for this: politicians have failed to come up with a comprehensive long-term housing plan that addresses the fundamental flaws in the market. The solutions lie in genuinely sorting out the planning system, major tax reforms and delivering more social housing, not short-term sticking plasters. 

Nonetheless, there is a place for schemes that specifically support first-time buyers, particularly if they increase new supply and help people who would otherwise be unable to get on the ladder.  
This means tying any subsidy to new homes only. But it doesn’t mean all schemes linked to new homes are sensible. Help to Buy, as we have seen, inflates prices, at least on the homes to which subsidy is linked, and involves risking a large amount of taxpayers’ money in exchange for a modest uptick in supply.

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