Conveyancing giant My Home Move is calling for a rebrand of shared ownership after its data showed fewer and fewer buyers are choosing the schemes as a route to purchasing a property.

However, the housing minister has called shared ownership ‘key’.

The conveyancer’s own management data for the 12 months to August 2017 showed shared ownership transaction activity decreased across seven out of nine regions – including London, the home counties, north-east, south-east, Wales, west midlands and Yorkshire.

Already at a low base, shared ownership transactions in London, for example, made up 0.4% of My Home Move cases last month, down from 0.7% in August 2016.

Across England and Wales, shared ownership tenures now account for just 1% of housing stock.

Meanwhile, separate research from a survey of 1,000 aspiring first-time buyers found that only 11% said they were looking to buy a shared ownership home, while 77% were looking to purchase a home outright. However, 29.3% admitted to not understanding what shared ownership is.

Doug Crawford, chief executive of MHM, said: “Last February the Government pledged to fix Britain’s broken housing market, and yet one of the schemes designed to encourage home ownership is falling in popularity.

“Our research highlights just how small transactional volumes for shared ownership are, raising questions as to whether the scheme needs to change its image to attract new home buyers.

“It’s our belief that home buyers, despite the lack of housing stock, are turned off by phrases like ‘affordable housing’, which is often used to describe ‘shared ownership’.

“Yes, they want to be able to afford their home, but they want to buy a dream. The idea of buying a home that has been built to fulfil a quota, or is being sold through a housing association and so has the negative connotations of social housing attached to it, is just too much for some.

“Perhaps we need to rebrand the image of shared ownership, to bring it in line with initiatives like the Government’s Help to Buy, to make it more attractive to first time-buyers.”

The figures come as awareness raising event Shared Ownership Week starts on Thursday, backed by housing minister Alok Sharma.

He said: “This government is determined to make housing more affordable, increase supply and help more people get on to the housing ladder. Shared ownership plays a key part in this, helping young aspiring home buyers to achieve their dream of home ownership.

“We’ve already helped hundreds of thousands of people become home owners through government-backed schemes and want even more people to benefit in the future.”

The Government has also said that self-build has an important contribution to make to the housing market. But Freedom of Information answers obtained by EYE show that the sector has fallen away heavily, with only around 6,500 self-builders a year now reclaiming VAT as they are entitled to.