Experiencing Shared Ownership

Abstract

In this chapter, we focus on our buyer participants’ data, and analyse their experiences of shared ownership. Our focus is on how they understand ownership and where they “fit” within it. As we demonstrated in Chap. 1, ownership is a complex and undulating concept in theory. One of the questions in our study was where it stopped and other’s responsibilities started. Shared ownership is a complex product. As we noted in Chaps. 2 and 3, although buyers purchase a share in the property, they do so with strings attached. They are entirely responsible for their internal repairs and improvements; although the association or managing agent is responsible for conducting external repairs and improvements, shared owners are responsible for the entire share attributable to their property (whatever proportion they own); there are restrictions on what shared owners are entitled to do with their property—they are not entitled to sub-let it and, at the time of our research, there were restrictions on re-sale (the association had a limited period within which it could nominate a buyer at an independent valuation).