This paper examines the concept of housing 'tenure' and its use in housing research. We argue that this concept is in fact misused. This occurs in two ways. First, it is frequently assumed that taxonomic collectives of tenure like 'owner-occupation' necessarily correspond with significant concrete categories such as housing quality or social status. Second, abstract categories like 'housing class' or 'consumption cleavages' are identified with specific tenures. In both cases 'tenure' is taken well beyond the relations of occupancy and ownership which the term actually describes, and in both cases this leads to severe loss of information and of analytical sensitivity. The paper challenges the use of tenure as some overall shorthand and ends by considering some alternative 'shorthands' which better describe the social relations of housing.