The UK mortgage market is amongst the most innovative in the world partly reflecting intense competition itself a product of a fairly open banking system. At the same time, the market is highly oligopolistic and has been so for decades. The core but hardly surprising finding is that there is no immediately simple way of transforming the affordability picture for first-time buyers or lower-income homeowners more generally. What is perhaps more surprising is how little progress has been made on the market front albeit there are perhaps a number of “green shoots”. Government schemes put most of their emphasis on access to homeownership  with a general assumption that affordability will follow. Risk is seen as very much a lesser issue. But many government initiatives have been in response to short-term pressures and have been ill-defined and poorly targeted. We need a clearer view of the scale of the affordable home ownership “gap” – taking account of house prices; incomes; the capacity to raise a deposit and risk attitudes.