Decline in home ownership among young people continues

More evidence has emerged that home ownership has slumped among people in their mid-30s to mid-40s. It raises the prospect of a generation of elderly renters in a few decades’ time.

Despite government schemes such as Help to Buy, the soaring cost of buying a house has priced many young people out of the market.

New figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that only half of people in their mid-30s to mid-40s had a mortgage in 2017, compared with more than two-thirds in the late 1990s.

People in this age group were also three times more likely to rent their home in 2017 compared with 20 years ago, while a third rented privately. In 1997 it was one in 10.

The running costs of living in private rented accommodation could prove to be a burden for older people.

The ONS cited research by Royal London which suggested that someone who owned their home outright could expect to maintain their living standards on a pension pot of £260,000, while someone who rented privately would need almost double this – £445,000.

Among older people, nearly three-quarters of the over-65s who owned their homes in 2017 did so outright, the ONS said. These included those who benefited from being able to buy their council home under the right to buy scheme introduced in 1980 by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government.

Four decades ago a third of all UK residential accommodation was social housing. By 2017 that figure had fallen to just under 18%, the lowest figure on record.