ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the extension of owner-occupation, and focuses on leasehold enfranchisement, low-cost homeownership, protection of homeowners, and the demand for second homes and holiday lets. It examines the macroeconomic determinants of the demand for homeownership, and reviews the Labour government’s approach to the sector in the aftermath of the 1997 General Election. Until at least the 1930s, owner-occupation was by no means considered by most households to be the ‘ideal’ or ‘natural’ form of tenure. A major incentive to owner-occupation in the late twentieth-century was tax relief on mortgage interest payments, an allowance geared to the standard/basic rate of income tax. Rising house prices are associated with increasing numbers of fiscal incentives, but they are also related to increases in average earnings. On regaining office in 1997, Labour was determined that there would be no return to the speculation, instability and negative equity that characterised the housing market in much of the 1980s and 1990s.
