Shared Ownership Resources is calling on the National Audit Office for a follow-up investigation into the value for money of shared ownership.
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To: Mr Gareth Davis, Comptroller and Auditor General, National Audit Office
Date: 30 March 2026
Thank you for your recent investigation into shared ownership. Shared Ownership Resources welcomes the National Audit Office report.
In particular, we welcome the insights the report offers on:
- the complexity of shared ownership as a legal and financial product
- consequences for government of incomplete monitoring data
- consequences for entrants to the scheme of inadequate information provision, and
- barriers to ongoing affordability and transition to full home ownership.
“Shared ownership remains an important route into home ownership, but it is complex, and weaknesses in information, affordability, data quality and redress mean that government does not yet have a full understanding of how the model works for consumers.”
Gareth Davies, Head of the National Audit Office
These are themes which align closely with the conclusions of our 2023 report, Shared Ownership: the consumer perspective.
‘Despite the benefits of the scheme there are also hazards. These arise from the characteristics of targeted homebuyers, the complexity of the model and of ownership structures, a lack of standardisation and consistency, inadequate information provision and weak regulation of marketing and delivery. However, monitoring and evaluation is almost exclusively focused on access rather than longer-term outcomes and impact for entrants to the scheme.’
Since publication of Shared Ownership Resources’ 2023 report, the shared ownership environment has become yet more complex. Our ‘My SO Home’ series of lived experience case studies illustrates the emergence of further issues including: questions around new-build sales prices, and problems faced by people who inherit Older Persons Shared Ownership (OPSO) homes, or those attempting resale of rural homes with obsolete 80% staircasing caps and local connections criteria.
In evidence to the cross-party Housing, Communities and Local Government (HCLG) Committee, in 2022 and 2026, we expressed concerns about the impact of shared ownership on commonhold, and the impact of commonhold on shared ownership.
“It is counterproductive to incorporate the shared ownership model into wider initiatives whilst so many problems with that model remain unresolved”.
We have long argued for scrutiny of the value for money offered by the shared ownership scheme in its current form.
Back in 2022, Shared Ownership Resources submitted evidence to the cross party Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (LUHC) Committee’s consultation on the regulation of social housing.
“Gaps in national data make it practically impossible to evaluate the degree to which policy claims such as ‘full ownership’ have been achieved: for example, a failure to analyse between staircasing to 100% in a home that a household continues to inhabit (full ownership) and a simultaneous sale and staircasing transaction (a costly and complex process which may be required purely in order to sell, perhaps to eliminate the rent component due to the cumulative impact of higher than inflation annual rent increases). Additionally, an absence of whole life cycle cost data makes it difficult to sustain the argument that shared ownership is effective at meeting need, or providing meaningful affordability, over the long-term.”
Shared Ownership Resources (2022)
In 2023, we submitted written and oral evidence to the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (LUHC) Committee’s inquiry into shared ownership, addressing the inquiry terms of reference with a particular focus on long-term outcomes and value for money.
In the same year, we published an Open Letter to the Regulator of Social Housing calling for better shared ownership data to improve outcomes for shared owners, and to evidence whether shared ownership subsidy offers taxpayer value for money.
In 2024, we submitted evidence to the cross party Public Bill Committee scrutinising the draft Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill in which we raised concerns regarding fairness, transparency and value for money for shared owners.
In 2025, we submitted written and oral evidence to the HCLG Committee’s inquiry into the affordability of home ownership calling for:
- Publicly available, independent, robust data and research on long-term outcomes for ‘shared owners’ for a better understanding of value for money and opportunity costs (on a full life cycle cost basis), the demographics for whom ‘shared ownership’ is most likely to have good outcomes as an affordable route to full homeownership, and those for whom it is most likely to have adverse outcomes.
- Viable exit routes.
- A joined up approach, delivered alongside effective and enforceable regulation.
As Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, observed: “It is incumbent on the government to see how they can make this scheme work better”.
We are calling on the National Audit Office for a follow-up investigation into the value for money of shared ownership
Value for money assessments, and recommendations, were outside the scope of the March 2026 National Audit Office report on its investigation into shared ownership.
We are calling on the National Audit Office for a follow-up investigation into the value for money of the shared ownership scheme, both for shared owners and for the public purse, with meaningful recommendations to ensure that the scheme delivers on its promises of affordability and a realistic route to full home ownership.
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