Increasing access to homeownership
It’s particularly important that local people, as well as first-time buyers and other target markets, can afford to buy and rent. It’s equally important that local authorities attract and retain households with the skills and knowledge to underpin economic growth – otherwise, there are potentially negative economic and social consequences.
Macroeconomic stability can be affected, people’s housing aspirations undermined, and the creation of sustainable communities and labour market flexibility inhibited. Fewer social tenants move into home ownership, creating a 'bottleneck' on the availability of social housing. There’s risk of an ever-widening gap between those who can afford to buy, and those who can't. There’s a newly emerging market of first-time buyers unable to access homeownership because of increasingly complex barriers such as the availability of finance and lack of deposit. Authorities and housing providers have a new priority group who can sustain homeownership, but require support to access it, and must consider innovative options to support them.
This course focuses on what local authorities, housing organisations and developers can do, and considers the role of longer-term rented products:
- What products might help and how they might work
- What others have tried
- How to secure products on-site and how they support financial viability
- Support services to enable homeownership products to work.
We’ll answer all these questions in detail and help housing professionals fully understand how product options can support different market groups. We’ll look at the practical development and application of products, how they support purchase in the current and future housing market, and how they can support improved economic viability of individual schemes. We’ll consider some of the bespoke options that housing professionals may be considering.
The course will be invaluable to:
- Sales teams wanting to better understand products and introduce new ideas
- Development staff considering new products and looking to offer added value in competitions for local authorities
- Planning officers negotiating with developers and needing to understand the products being offered and negotiate alternatives
- Developers trying to introduce new products for schemes
- Housing strategy officers looking to meet housing need and demand.
Our trainer
Helen Brzozowski has worked in social housing for 14 years. She has been a consultant and trainer for six years and is a director of arc4. Her expertise lies in the development of products and options to support households to access and move into the tenure of their choice. Her work involves developing new products and evaluating their success, including equity purchase and rent to purchase models, and intermediate rented products. She assists housing associations, local authorities and developers to develop delivery mechanisms and models to create viable schemes and introduce a range and mix of tenures to meet local needs.
HQN has a track record of helping organisations achieve real and lasting performance improvements. If you are interested in accessing this training package please contact us by emailing training@hqnetwork.co.uk
