Affordability of Home Ownership

Status / emerging findings

• Government will not set annual home-building targets, only track net completions over the full Parliament; £39bn affordable housing programme targets 180,000 social rented homes over 10 years but treats this as indicative pending provider bids, not binding.
• Current UK property transactions take five months vs 30 days in Australia; stamp duty forces first-time buyers to save £78,000 deposits and creates 'bedroom blocking' among downsizers; digital platform reform (PEXA-style) could compress timelines to 5–7 weeks.
• Even meeting building targets would only return supply to 2021 levels; achieving early-2000s affordability (5x income) requires 10+ years of elevated building. House price falls are economically unviable due to negative equity risks.
• Shared ownership is regionally variable but more affordable than private rent in most places; however, 36% of low-income shared owners skip other bill payments to cover housing costs, and existing owners face a two-tier system with fewer protections.
• Treasury has not analysed student loan impact on first-time buyer mortgage affordability; government estimates 1% housing stock increase decreases prices by 2% in aggregate but concedes this will take many years.

Why it matters

Home ownership has become inaccessible for millions of working-age UK adults, locking them into rental precarity and constraining family formation; this inquiry tests whether the government's flagship 1.5 million homes target and reforms can materially shift affordability or merely manage decline.

Tone arc

Opened procedural and supply-focused (October: why ownership is falling, deposit/supply barriers); shifted critical in January when conveyancing sector revealed transaction inefficiency as a major drag; remained mixed through February government defence session, with ministers committing to future analysis rather than conceding immediate policy gaps.

Key witnesses

Matthew Pennycook (Housing Minister), Lucy Rigby (Economic Secretary to the Treasury), Sophie Hale (Resolution Foundation), Timothy Douglas (Propertymark), Beth Rudolf (Conveyancing Association), Stanimira Milcheva (UCL real estate finance), Peter Levell (IFS), Vicky Spratt (housing journalist)