Publications

There are many different goals that affordable homeownership programs may seek to achieve. Among them, there are several common goals that are often linked to balancing individual opportunities to build assets with community goals of ensuring long-term affordability and preserving the opportunities and assets that public investment helped to create. This report aims to provide communities and advocates with a general overview of three major approaches to long-term affordable homeownership, and how each functions under different market conditions and serves a community's asset-building and affordability goals.

This suite of educational materials reviews the benefits of “shared equity” – a unique approach to affordable homeownership. Under this approach, a state or local government provides funding to help a family purchase a home. In return for this investment, the government entity shares in the benefits of any home price appreciation that may occur. Homebuyers benefit from a substantially lower home price and the opportunity for significant home equity gains. Local communities benefit by retaining vital workers who otherwise couldn’t afford to live in the communities they serve. And, by ensuring that the public’s investment keeps pace with the housing market, shared equity strategies allow governments to help generations of families achieve homeownership with a single initial investment.

View the Suite of Materials

This report presents a review of programs and policies across 22 states that either support or hinder the development of shared equity homeownership units by state and local governments or nonprofit organizations. In some cases, state programs or policies stand in the way of local programs, making it difficult to effectively preserve affordable homeownership. In other cases, state governments have adopted policies intended to encourage and support local shared equity homeownership programs.

This report seeks to clarify the overall characteristics of shared equity / shared appreciation homeownership programs, identify the distinguishing characteristics of the multiple programs, and show how the different programs fulfill somewhat distinct housing policy objectives.

This report explores community concerns over the potential limitation of wealth creation in shared equity homeownership programs and how to best balance permanent affordability and asset building in these programs.