When the homeownership dream turns sour: economic abuse and shared ownership
Shared ownership has helped many fulfil their dream of homeownership. But for survivors of domestic abuse, there is a worrying gap in the system that can cause them problems long after they have left the relationship. Jess McCabe reports. Illustration by Eva Bee
When Serena* bought 25% of a shared ownership home with her former partner, she did not expect it would become a tool with which he abused her. Nor did she anticipate how hard it would be to disentangle herself and her finances.
The purchase ultimately left Serena paying off more than £30,000 of arrears by herself and facing a repossession case that saw her owing a further £10,000 in legal fees. The experience also left her with years of additional trauma after leaving the financially, physically and sexually abusive relationship.
Serena contacted Inside Housing last year to highlight her story, told in more detail below. Unhappily for Serena and other people like her, further investigation reveals there are few ways to stop perpetrators who want to make use of rent arrears and mortgages to continue domestic abuse, even after a relationship has ended.
While some housing providers have informal approaches on rent arrears in cases of economic abuse for their social housing tenants, current law and policy does little to protect shared owners.
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For Serena, the story began when she and her then-partner bought a shared ownership property in 2014. Serena paid the full deposit in cash, with the agreement that her partner would pay the rent. He never did. Month by month, the arrears crept up. Serena had no idea.
At times her partner did let her know that he was behind on the rent – but not how badly. “I left him towards the end of the pandemic,” Serena says, explaining that she and her daughter moved out for safety reasons. At this point, her former partner had also left the property. She says she was not receiving communications from her landlord as her now former partner had the post redirected.
It was only in 2022 when she found out the extent of the arrears – by then nearly £22,000. Legally, Serena and her former partner, like most people who buy a home together, are “jointly and severally liable”. This means that if one party decides not to pay the mortgage, or as in this case, the rent on a shared ownership property, the whole burden can fall on the other person.
It is a facet of English law that can leave victims of economic abuse exposed to huge financial risks.
Financial abuse – where a perpetrator controls their victim’s wages or savings, for example – has been recognised for years. The wider category of economic abuse was incorporated into the legal definition of domestic abuse in England in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. The law defines economic abuse as any behaviour that has a “substantial adverse effect” on the person’s ability to “acquire, use or maintain money or other property, or… obtain goods or services”.
But the recognition of Serena’s experience in law did little for her, she says. “It’s as if financial coercion is only ever considered if the abuser doesn’t allow you access to money, or a bank account, or a phone. It’s as though I should consider myself lucky to even have a property.”
The charity Surviving Economic Abuse (SEA) says that one in seven women have experienced economic abuse within the past 12 months.
Such cases involving social housing tenants are reasonably well known. Inside Housing understands that even if it is not set out in policy, housing associations have the flexibility to forgive arrears which are run up as part of the abuse, or end one tenancy and put the victim on a new tenancy to provide a fresh start.
Yet policies seen by Inside Housing did not specify what to do in cases involving shared owners – a growing segment of social landlords’ residents.
The scale of the problem is likely huge. Research from 2024 by SEA found that one in eight women who held a joint mortgage had been subject to economic abuse related to that mortgage within the previous two years.
Data on how many shared owners there are is hard to come by, but an estimate in 2021 put the figure at around 200,000. This suggests that many thousands of shared owners could be impacted by economic abuse involving their property.
“It’s as if financial coercion is only ever considered if the abuser doesn’t allow you access to money, or a bank account, or a phone. It’s as though I should consider myself lucky to even have a property”
SEA warns in the report: “Perpetrators can cause a lifetime of irreparable harm through the joint mortgage and other shared finances, leading to destroyed credit ratings, homelessness, long-term housing insecurity, and preventing victim-survivors from accessing safe emergency accommodation, such as refuge.”
The report gives examples, such as “accruing debts against the property for which the victim-survivor is jointly liable, or stealing their money that is otherwise used for paying the mortgage”.
Other examples include making “token” payments to halt a repossession, or disrupting viewings of a property that is on sale. This can be a way to maintain control of the victim and prevent financial disentanglement.
Mortgage lenders have begun to respond. Earlier this year, UK Finance, the trade association for the banking sector, published a report on economic abuse, summing up current practice and the legal framework. Currently, lenders take a “case-by-case basis” approach, which could involve pausing mortgage payments or restructuring the loan.
The report makes a number of recommendations, including that all financial services should sign up to a ‘Tell Us Once’ reporting system for economic abuse, so the fact of abuse occurring can be shared across banks and lenders. This would avoid putting victims in danger, and avoid retraumatising survivors by making them repeat what has happened to multiple organisations.
For shared owners, the position is more complicated. As well as any mortgage payments, they must pay rent to the housing provider. Shared ownership is not mentioned in UK Finance’s report.
SEA’s website has detailed guides for homeowners and survivors of abuse with joint mortgages. But the charity declined to comment for this story, saying staff do not have enough knowledge of shared ownership.
Domestic abuse policies – what is the law?
2024 arguably marked a watershed for domestic abuse in social housing. New consumer regulations required housing providers in England to have a domestic abuse policy in place for the first time.
In December, the Regulator of Social Housing downgraded Castle Point Borough Council to the lowest grade of C4 under the consumer standards, partly because it lacked a domestic abuse policy. (“A domestic violence policy is being finalised as a top priority,” says Rob Lillis, its portfolio holder for health, well-being and housing.)
Inside Housing examined various housing providers’ websites to see how accessible such policies are and contacted several landlords registered with the regulator.
Many of the policies contain plans that aim to help and inform both sole and joint social housing tenants. For example, the policies for Loddon Homes and Berry Brook Homes, wholly owned subsidiaries of Wokingham Council, set out both what the landlord might do in cases of domestic violence and what it cannot do, such as remove a perpetrator from a joint tenancy without a court order.
But policies we saw had little guidance on what to do if economic abuse is perpetrated through the rent, or if the resident is a shared owner. And many of the remedies listed for social tenants – such as transfer to another property – would not be possible for shared owners.
Dr Kelly Henderson, founder of community interest company Addressing Domestic Abuse, which gives social landlords domestic abuse training, says that good domestic abuse policies should tell staff what steps to take for any of their residents, not just social tenants.
She says: “If the organisation offers a variety of housing, the policy needs to cover everything. So you need to say how this policy relates to shared ownership, market rent etc, so that it’s not just a social housing policy that actually makes no sense to anything else that you might offer.”
Although Dr Henderson campaigned for years for the regulator to require domestic abuse policies, she believes the new consumer standards do not go far enough since they only specify that an organisation must have a policy, not requiring it to be high quality or effective.
Instead we asked lawyers at TLT, which fed into the report for a broader picture. In short: shared owners are leaseholders, and usually the lease specifies that if rent is not paid, they could lose the property entirely.
If this happens, the shared owner could be left in a very vulnerable position – with no asset and potentially still liable for the rest of the mortgage.
Heff Heathcote, a partner at TLT, notes: “If there was equity and a freehold, you could split that equity, and at least the victim-survivor [is left in] not a great position but [gets] something.”
In some cases, lenders may intervene. The bank could staircase the shared ownership to 100%, restructuring the mortgage, or pay the rent for a time. However, these decisions tend to be based on affordability. Serena was in an unusual position. She had paid for the equity share of the property with savings and was unmortgaged. She did not have a lender to approach for help.
Serena attempted to fight the possession case, but lost and had to find the money to pay off the arrears and landlord Heylo Housing’s costs. She also made an unsuccessful complaint to the Housing Ombudsman over the landlord’s handling of her case.
Currently, Serena hopes to sell the property to extricate herself from this situation. Her former partner initially delayed giving permission for the sale.
This was a point of contention between Heylo and Serena, who wanted the provider to remove her former partner from the lease before she paid the arrears, or to sell the property and pay off the arrears from the proceeds. Heylo had little choice: it cannot legally remove a party from the lease and when two people are listed on the lease, both must legally consent to sell.
“It is always the same: issues and problems are always made my problem – not my ex, the one who’s abusing. He’s not inconvenienced in any way,” Serena says.
“If there was equity and a freehold, you could split that equity, and at least the victim-survivor [is left in] not a great position but [gets] something”
A Heylo spokesperson says: “While we recognise the difficult circumstances the customer has faced, Heylo acted in accordance with our responsibilities at all times throughout this case. While legal action is always a last resort, we were grateful to both the county court and Housing Ombudsman for ruling in Heylo’s favour.”
When the situation came to light, Heylo acknowledged it did not have a domestic abuse policy in place. This has since become a regulatory requirement (see box above).
In theory, there is a legal avenue open to victims of economic abuse, such as through the Matrimonial Causes Act if the couple were married, or the Family Law Act 1996. However, Natalie Drew, a partner at TLT, warns these mechanisms are “not quick”. Also, she says, legal aid has been largely withdrawn for family law cases, making it harder for survivors to have their cases heard.
One of UK Finance’s recommendations is that the Home Office and Ministry of Justice should “ensure all victim-survivors can access professional legal advice”.
One possible solution is for courts to be allowed to order ‘interim several liability’, which requires the mortgage or debt to be treated separately, rather than jointly. SEA’s report calls for a cross-government taskforce to consider this and other legislative changes.
Not all fixes, though, require legislation. As this story was being prepared for press, Heylo sent an email to Serena, addressed to her and her former partner, seemingly from a contact person who was not aware of the case. Serena replied, explaining the abuse again to the new person. “I don’t want to see his name. You could say it’s a petty thing, but it’s a known thing that triggers you, especially in your email inbox,” she says.
Inside Housing understands Heylo swiftly apologised, and Serena has made an official complaint.
A Treasury spokesperson says: “Economic abuse has devastating consequences. The financial services industry, including mortgage lenders, have made progress in responding to economic abuse and we continue to work with the industry to help combat it.”
In the meantime, it seems likely that the options for shared owners experiencing economic abuse will remain limited. Like Serena, whose situation at the time of writing remains unresolved, they will likely find no plan in place should they approach their landlord.
“It’s very lonely,” Serena says. “You’re already feeling lonely and isolated as a domestic abuse victim anyway, and that just added to how I felt.”
*We refer to Serena by her first name to protect her anonymity
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