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Affordable Housing

We bring together leading researchers, industry experts and public sector stakeholders to provide solutions to the global social challenge of affordable housing.

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Overview

Housing unaffordability not only leads to segregation and inequality within communities but also is a major obstacle to productivity and economic growth. The supply of housing at affordable levels in most cases does not occur naturally and requires some form government intervention. Housing policies in the UK have ranged from tax breaks (stamp duty holiday, to mortgage equity support like Help to Buy and Shared Ownership. With limited government budgets, institutional investors has entered in this market and acted as providers of various forms of financing to new or existing affordable housing. Besides, the rental market plays a crucial role in supporting households that are not in a position to get on the housing ladder. Build-to-let and buy-to-let investors have entered rental markets and also shape the supple of affordable rental units.  

Leadership

Professor Stanimira Milcheva is the Director of the Affordable Housing Hub and a professor in Real Estate Finance at UCL. Her background is in finance and economics looking at real asset markets and asset pricing. Stani’s aim is to work alongside strategic stakeholders to provide transparency on the market for affordable housing. She has set up the Shared Ownership Data Initiative to increase wider public understanding for shared ownership as well as provide understanding around shared ownership as a hybrid housing tenure. 

Stani has published over 20 peer-reviewed papers in leading field academic journals such as the Journal of Corporate Finance, Journal of Banking and Finance, Regional Science and Urban Economics, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Energy Economics.  She is the recipient of best paper awards (RICS , Homer Hoyt Institute , Cushman and Wakefield) and funding awards (Real Estate Research Institute, University of Reading Research Endowment Trust Fund). 

Stani have worked on various funded research and advisory projects for government (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities) local government, and non-profit providers as well as key stakeholder organisations (CASE, G15, National Housing Federation, Shelter, Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, European Public Real Estate Association, etc.). Send Stani an email.

Aims

The Affordable Housing Hub brings together academics, policy makers and industry stakeholders to work collaboratively on solutions to housing unaffordability. We aim to inform housing policy and enhance public understanding of and financial literacy around home ownership. 

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The Maturing Shared Ownership Market

A comprehensive analysis of the Shared Ownership Market in England provided new insights into staircasing and rent arrears. The study uses administrative data from various housing associations between 2012 and 2022. The research focuses on Shared Ownership mortgage market indicators, rent arrears and staircasing. Find the key findings and the report here. 

Affordable Homes Programme 2021-2026: evaluation scoping report

UCL academic Stanimira Milcheva and director of the Affordable Housing Hub has been leading on the scoping report for the evaluation of the Affordable Homes Programme 2021-2026 (AHP). The AHP provides £11.5 billion of capital funding over five years to enable the supply of approximately 162,000 new affordable homes on 2022 projections. The AHP is the fifth of a series of government programmes to provide grant funding for the construction of affordable homes in England. The project is sponsored by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC), the government department in charge of affordable housing policy. The report provides a guide for those commissioned to evaluate the highly complex programme ensuring it is designed in a way that maximises the detection of impact, actionable insight and ability to assess value for money. It sets out the research questions and suggested methodologies that might be used to answer them. Find the report here.  

Double or Quits: The influence of longer-term grant funding on affordable housing supply

The report explores potential effects of expending government subsidies through the Affordable Homes Programme (AHP) to a longer period of 10 years instead of currently 3-5 years. It uses in-depth interviews with housing associations to assess the effects, which are mostly associated with providing more certainty for house building and land purchasing. This report has been produced in partnership with, and with support from, the Consortium of Associations in the South East, the National Housing Federation and Shelter. Find the report here. 

Shared Ownership Data Initiative (SODI)

The purpose of SODI is by collecting administrative data on shared ownership from participating members to increase transparency on and the understanding of the shared ownership market for users and stakeholders.  Find out more here.

In the media

  • Professor Stanimira Milcheva has featured on the 6pm and 10pm BBC News in June 2024 on a special housing programme and how housing affordability will be featured in parties’ manifestos. Find out more here.  
  • Professor Stanimira Milcheva has features in Sky News main news in April 2024 about a special focus on shared ownership and service charges. Find out more here.  

Impact

Professor Stanimira Milcheva provides evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee on Shared Ownership in December 2023. Find out more here. 

Publications

Events and conferences

BSSC Doctoral conference 2019: affordable housing and big data

In June 2019, the second BSSC Doctoral Conference took place, organised by PhD students Yunlong Huang and Thomas Weston. The theme this year was affordable housing and big data. With presentations from both academics and PhD students, a wide variety of topics related to housing and machine learning were covered, exploring areas such as affordable housing, migration and demography, and machine learning methodologies. 

Download the presentations:

The Case of Affordable Housing  - June 2018 symposium

Symposium on affordable housing - UCL, June 2018

On 22 June 2018, The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management hosted a one day symposium - The Case of Affordable Housing: Private Sector Investment in Social Infrastructure - exploring the role of private investment in housing affordability.

The symposium brought together leading academic researchers in public policy, urban planning, real estate and economics, joining representatives from local authorities and government and industry financers to explore alternative solutions to the housing affordability crisis faced by the UK and the role of private sector investment. 

Read our reflections on the symposium and watch films of the sessions.

The Case of Affordable Housing - September 2019 conference

Affordable housing conference

On 12 September, The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management held a one day international conference - The Case of Affordable Housing: a global perspective on financing and institutional ownership. 

The conference brought together academics and a wide range of industry stakeholders to explore global case studies focused on new tools and models for financing affordable housing, working towards viable solutions for the UK and beyond.

Read our reflections on the conference, watch films of the sessions and download the papers and presentation slides. 

UCL-KTH Symposium Series Towards Net Zero Affordable Housing – Lessons from Sweden and the UK

As part of a collaborative project between University College London (UCL) and KTH Stockholm, The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction (BSSC) hosted two hybrid virtual conferences on the pertinent topic of Net Zero and Affordable Housing. 

The first event “Towards Net Zero Affordable Housing – The Swedish Perspective” was held on Monday 14th June and was chaired by Dr Bertram Steininger (KTH). The second event “Towards Net Zero Affordable Housing – The UK Perspective” was held on Wednesday 23rd June and was chaired by Dr Stanimira Milcheva (UCL).  

The symposiums provided a platform to discuss the topic with prominent experts from academia and industry and aimed to uncover the data needs which can help us understand feasible pathways to achieving net zero in housing. 

Read our reflections on the symposium and watch recordings of the events.

Members

A number of School academics, PhD students and honorary and affiliate staff carry out research in this area. 

Dr Richard Barkham

Richard is a specialist in macro and real estate economics. He joined CBRE in 2014 as Executive Director and Global Chief Economist. Prior to taking up his position with CBRE, Richard was a Director of Research for the Grosvenor Group an international business with circa $10bn of capital under management in real estate. He was also a non-Executive Director of Grosvenor Fund Management where he was involved in fund strategy, risk analysis and capital raising. Richard is the author of two books and numerous academic and industry papers. In 2012 he published ‘Real Estate and Globalisation’ (Wiley Blackwell, Oxford), which explains the impact on real estate markets of the rise of emerging markets such as China and Brazil. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of Reading where he taught, in the Departments of Economics and Land Management, between the years of 1987 and 1998.  

Professor Yolande Barnes

Prof. Yolande Barnes has been examining and analysing real estate markets since 1986. As Director of World Research at Savills, Yolande provided evidence-based advice to clients and thought-leadership in real estate. She set up and ran the UK residential research department, pioneering and developing new techniques for measuring place potential, land values and sustainable urbanism.

In 2012, she applied these techniques globally and in 2014 took on all sectors worldwide, focusing on cities. She is an advisor to a variety of different enterprises and organisations. She writes regularly for research publications, national and international newspapers on a variety of property-related topics, and regularly appears on television and radio. Send Yolande an email.  

Pete Gladwell

Pete is the L&G Group social impact and investment director and was heading the Public Sector Partnerships for LGIM Real Assets prior to that. After an erstwhile life as a Youth Worker, Pete joined Legal & General in 2007, launching a new generation of property funds focussed on liability matching and Defined Contributions pension schemes, and L&G’s joint venture with PGGM, which total over £5bn.  In 2015, Pete moved to lead L&G’s investments with the Public Sector - including the Cabinet Office, Local Authorities, NHS, Housing Associations and Universities - which now total over £4.5bn. 

Pete holds an MA from Brasenose College, Oxford in Computation, the IMC, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and Honorary Professor at UCL.

Pete is heavily involved in local community projects in Harlesden, west London and a Trustee of the Young Foundation, which works to create a more equal and just society through social innovation. 

Paul Hackett

Paul is CEO of Optivo, one of the UK’s leading housing associations. Paul is a former chair of G15, representing London’s largest housing associations and a former member of the Homes for Londoners Board. Paul is particularly interested in the funding and delivery of affordable housing and the role of resident engagement in the governance and management of social landlords. 

Paul is an Honorary Professor at the UCL Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction and a member of the RICS Housing Supply Group. He is an Academician of the Academy of Urbanism and a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the Chartered Institute of Building and the Chartered Institute of Housing. 

Yunlong Huang

Yunlong Huang has a background in financial modeling, advanced statistics and civil engineering, specialising in applied predictive modeling. His research interests lies in the intersection of data science, machine learning and housing. He is developing a system to collect research data and use specialised computational algorithms to combine with multi-source data. This will result in one of the biggest databases of UK housing market studies. Yunlong utilises modern statistical and machine learning methods, industry grade workflow and best practices while developing quantitative academic research methods. Send Yunlong an email.
 

Hang Lai

Hang Lai has experience of working at real estate company as research analyst prior to his academic journey. Now, Hang’s research area lies in the real estate/housing economics and finance and adopt micro level data to do empirical research. Housing affordability is an important topic in his research area and he has done an economics analysis on affordable housing policy — Right to Buy.

Hang’s current research explores the long run discount rate using repeat sales housing in England and Wales to estimate the term structure of discount rate. This can show how households evaluate future cash flows at present value and it is helpful for policy appraisal and investment portfolio decision. Send Hang an email.

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Events at the School

School staff and PhD students attend a BSCPM research seminar

Our events address topics related to management and economics in the built environment.

Highly regarded academics from around the world are invited to present research related to the built environment, management and economics to a diverse audience. 

Introducing our brand new undergraduate degree Construction Project Management MSci

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Find out more about our brand new MBA in Major Infrastructure Delivery

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