Stephen Teagle says budget must include initiatives to support home ownership
The chief executive of Vistry’s partnerships business has urged the government to introduce a Do-It-Yourself Shared Ownership (DIYSO) scheme for new builds in the upcoming budget.
Established in the 1990s and replaced in 2009, DIYSO was a part-buy, part-rent scheme under which housing providers purchased homes and sold a share to the buyer.
The scheme enabled buyers to purchase any property on the open market, not just new builds - something which Stephen Teagle, chief executive of partnerships and regeneration for Vistry, described as “a nightmare for housing associations”.
Under his proposed policy, a purchaser who qualifies for shared ownership would approach a housing association in the way they currently do.
But instead of only being able to buy a shared ownership home on an estate being developed by that provider, they could pick a new builder “from any housebuilder or housing association”.
He suggested that certain conditions could be applied to ensure housing associations were not being forced to take on poor quality stock.
“You’d have to buy a property with an EPC rating of A or B, you could set space standards. There’d be a whole range of things that come with it, but it would allow shared ownership to be much more actively deployed across the housing market,” he said.
Teagle was speaking after the publication of Vistry’s latest half-year results last week, which showed drops in revenue, profit and completions.
The firm is anticipating a significant uptick in partner-funded revenue in 2026, as the effects of the government’s new £39bn Social and Affordable Homes Programme kicks in.
>>See also: ‘I’m extremely demanding’: Greg Fitzgerald on delivering the Vistry growth plan
However, Teagle said that, when it comes to open market sales, performance “depends on what the government says in November”, adding that he expected no meaningful changes in interest rates over the coming year.
“I think that if the government were to come out with initiatives to support home ownership, I think we will see an uptick in home ownership next year,” he said, offering the new build DIYSO idea as one potential initiative.
The original DIYSO programme was replaced by HomeBuy Direct, a scheme whereby the government and a housing developer jointly funded an equity loan of 30% of the valuation, allowing the purchaser to only pay a mortgage on 70% of the home’s value.
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