There has been plenty of commentary over the past few weeks about the proposed changes to shared ownership, from concerns about the practicalities of staircasing in 1% tranches to fundamental issues of viability of schemes.
The headline changes are now well known and various organisations have raised issues, including the National Sales Group, which is providing feedback to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. We are already facing the possibility of a two-tier market because of the peppercorn ground rent requirement for Help to Buy under the 2021/23 funding regime and the government’s intention to legislate for peppercorn ground rents across the leasehold tenure. Perhaps one of the biggest areas of concern, therefore, is that there will be further division in the shared ownership market. Ruth Barnes and Lindsay Garratt discuss in an article featured in Inside Housing