ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the housing search issues, tenure choice and aspects of housing mobility. It looks at tenure choices globally and within the UK compared with other European countries. Some major European countries have a very different tenure pattern with the private renting sector being a very sizeable part of the housing market. Well-functioning private rented sectors (PRS) offer a viable and long-term tenure option for the households. A healthy PRS can bring stability to the ownership sector with less demand and better quality of financially able households demanding ownership properties. The shared ownership (SO) model is an intermediate housing mechanism, where the idea is to enable households facing severe affordability constraints, such as in London, to purchase a part of the house and the rest is rented. The SO has been widely viewed as part of a policy framework driven partly by an ideological bias supporting homeownership.
