Owning your own home

Sparky, had a word with the other half, who works in the policy team at Shelter (and is policy lead on private rental sector and first time buyers).

If you are single, and live in an expensive area, such as London, part-buy part-rent can be the best option as the other option is just renting forever. You should consider that if you want to sell it will be harder to shift as it is a reduced market, and depreciation can definitely still be an issue, but it could definitely still be a better option than renting forever, if you can afford it, as at least you're still be building up an asset of a kind.

I am in a 50% shared ownership and its done me ok over the years, but in today's market I would be less sure. You have a lot of buy to let executive homes at stupid prices, with a tiny share for sale, like 15%. That's barely better than renting.

On a side note, I'm surprised that Shelter has a first time buyers and private rental dept. Isn't that rather a huge scope creep?