It’s difficult to assess whether shared ownership is working as it should, a new report from the National Audit Office (NAO) finds.

It says that complexities around service charges and the ‘staircasing’ model (whereby customers increase the proportion of the property they own rather than rent) mean many who take up the scheme don’t fully understand the longer-term financial risks.  

The NAO report finds that since the closure of the Help to Buy scheme and the introduction of new restrictions on Right to Buy, shared ownership is now the largest government supported home ownership scheme for new owners.  

The annual delivery of new shared ownership homes has increased over the last decade from 11,128 homes in 2014-15 to 20,353 homes in 2024-25.

Last year it made up 11% of the supply of all new build homes.

Customers report concerns with rising costs such as increased service charges over time, along with transaction costs that apply each time shared owners want to buy a bigger portion of their property.

The implementation of the Renters Rights Act, the Social and Affordable Homes Programme and changes to leasehold are designed to improve the experience of shared owners, but also add to the complex picture.

Government lacks essential data to help assess whether shared ownership remains an affordable and well-managed scheme over time.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) collects and publishes data from private registered providers and local authorities about affordable housing and shared ownership annually through the CORE (Continuous Recording of Lettings and Sales in Social Housing in England) dataset, as well as having access to other data sets that capture some aspects of shared ownership property sales and staircasing.

The report finds that CORE does not have a full response rate from local authorities and private registered housing providers and MHCLG is unable to enforce collection.

More and better data, the report finds, would enable MHCLG to determine whether the model is affordable over time and to assess risks across the shared ownership lifecycle.

“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” says Gareth Davies, head of the NAO.

You can read the full report here: Investigation into shared ownership