The ownership data challenge for Housing Associations

Housing Associations have a huge role to play in our society. Their ability to own and operate (and keep the costs down on) many properties is exactly what families of all kinds sometimes need to help put a foot on the property ladder.

Housing Associations are usually not-for-profits. They own, let, and manage rental properties, and they have a 'keep costs low' philosophy: the rents usually get put back into the acquisition of new property and maintenance of current stock.

Here's the challenge:

Housing Associations are low-cost businesses buying data that's too expensive. 

Many if not most Housing Associations have a history of organisational mergers, stock acquisition and dispersion. And then there's inconsistent ways of holding information - so there's often a lack of clarity about the exact asset bank, where it is, and what's happening with it. They need to:

• find out what they own
• find out what they don't own
• see which other Associations are working locally
• and understand all local authority-owned assets

But. Getting visibility of assets can be challenging. Not surprisingly, Housing Association portfolio managers - like many other property-wise business - use software that depends on polygons to underpin their work. But they buy the data from HM Land Registry - and, by the time you've added other datasets into the mix, that is not the least expensive place to buy this niche bundle of information. 

We offer the same data and more - there's no difference in the underlying polygons - for wider areas than HM Land Registry, at a lower price. We can also supply one-offs, so, if an Association wants to look at a specific area (say, all the Housing Associations within Lancashire, for example) then we can provide this as well.