Richard Partington - Home ownership among young adults has 'collapsed', study finds

Margret Thatcher said would turn Britain to a country of home owners and she started forcing councils to sell of their council housing, but they weren't allowed to replace any of the housing stock. House builders make more money building just a few houses to keep house prices high, and so without the government supplying houses there became a housing shortage. Older people who had their own homes, and a bit of spare cash on the side, became amateur landlords buying a house, renting it out, and then using the income to get a loan to buy another house, and so on, until some owned hundreds of houses, and others thousands. Politicians got in on it, and so did many estate agents.

It reminds me of when I was a child when I went into a shop with my friends and we found to our surprise that the Mcvitie's fruit pies had a buy section one get the next one free label on. So we bought one each, went outside, tore the free offer label off and went back in to get another pie, and so on, until we had cleared all the pies out of the shop. It took two to three weeks before the shop got some more pies in, but when they arrived we did the same thing all over again. Our mums were pleased with us as we had loads of fruit pies in the cupboard. Free pies, free houses, although there are risks and hassle involved, for sure.

Now Britain is becoming a renting society again as the younger generation can't afford to buy a home anymore. Again, Tory supporters were sold a pup (although some made a packet out it) their families poorer than ever, but they still blame the individual.

Now adult children stay with their parents until their thirties, so much for the Thatcher neoliberal dream where we all become home owners, and through our hard work, would get to live a good life. Thatcher said she would break the bureaucratic system and set us free so we could become prosperous, but now millions of young adults are stuck living at home with their parents into their thirties while doing dead end jobs. So much for freedom.

My neighbour, a staunch conservative supporter, sold her three lovely bedroom house to give her daughter and her husband enough money for a deposit for a home. She now lives in tin shack in the countryside.  KV

Home ownership among young adults has 'collapsed', study finds 

The chances of a young adult on a middle income owning a home in the UK have more than halved in the past two decades.

New research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows how an explosion in house prices above income growth has increasingly robbed the younger generation of the ability to buy their own home. For 25- to 34-year-olds earning between £22,200 and £30,600 per year, home ownership fell to just 27% in 2016 from 65% two decades ago.

Middle income young adults born in the late 1980s are now no more likely than those lower down the pay scale to own their own home. Those born in the 1970s were almost as likely as their peers on higher wages to have bought their own home during young adulthood. 

Andrew Hood, a senior research economist at the IFS, said: “Home ownership among young adults has collapsed over the past 20 years, particularly for those on middle incomes.”

The IFS said young adults from wealthy backgrounds are now significantly more likely than others to own their own home.

Between 2014 and 2017 roughly 30% of 25- to 34-year-olds whose parents were in lower-skilled jobs such as delivery drivers or sales assistants owned their own home, versus 43% for the children of those in higher-skilled jobs such as lawyers and teachers.

The Guardian

Richard Partington - Home ownership among young adults has 'collapsed', study finds