- Unhappy birthday - 15th November 2024
- Migration story - 14th November 2024
- Numbers game - 13th November 2024
Leading property experts have endorsed the ‘terrible’ findings of a controversial report which reveal that home ownership in the 25 to 34 year age group in Wales has almost halved in 33 years.
In 1984 the proportion of those owning their own homes in Wales stood at 50 per cent of people in their late 20s and early 30s.
But last year that figure was just 28 per cent.
One Estate Agent in Cardiff, Andrew Gregory of PM Premier told us: “This is terrible.
“So much of the economy rests on first time buyers getting their foot on the property ladder.”
The problem spreads across the UK.
Since the mid-1990s home prices have grown seven times faster than incomes – denying millions the chance of a place of their own.
Home ownership among young families has plummeted in almost every area, according to the devastating inquiry into the housing crisis facing millennials, who are classed as those born between 1981 and 2000.
The inquiry into the number of families headed by a 25 to 34-year-old that own their own home shows that the crisis now goes far beyond London.
Analysis conducted as part of a two-year investigation into intergenerational fairness in Britain, chaired by a former Conservative minister, found that millennials are being forced into increasingly cramped and expensive rented properties that leaves them with a longer commute and little chance of saving for a home.
It also finds that an increasing proportion of the young are living in overcrowded housing.
The commission conducting the investigation, which has been overseen by the Resolution Foundation thinktank and includes the former universities minister David Willetts, concludes that new taxes on property wealth may be the only way to restore fairness, and prepare the UK to pay for the care and support costs of an ageing population.
Home ownership among 25 to 34-year-olds has plummeted in Greater Manchester from 53 per cent in 1984 to 26 per cent in 2017.
It has fallen from 54 per cent to 25 per cent in south Yorkshire, from 45 per cent to 20 per cent in the West Midlands, and from 55 per cent to 27 per cent in the south-east of England.
In outer London, the proportion has collapsed from 53 per cent to just 16 per cent.
Out of 22 areas and countries analysed by the commission, in only one – Strathclyde in Scotland – has home ownership among the young remained stable.
It stood at 32 per cent in 1984 and 33 per cent last year, having peaked at 45 per cent in 2002.
The news comes at a difficult time for the Conservative-led UK Government as local elections approach.
In February it was revealed in a report by the Institute For Fiscal Studies that home ownership among young people has plummeted in the past 20 years.
The Conservative MP Nick Boles said: “The collapse in home ownership among people in their twenties and thirties earning average incomes is a social and economic disaster”.
The traditional Tory dream of the UK becoming a property-owning democracy looks to be fading.
The pledge was even a key plank of the party’s 2015 General Election manifesto.
In February 2017 the UK Government launched a white paper to give people more choice and security in what it called “this broken housing market”.
It appears from the latest figures that much more needs to be done.
Not least in Wales.
Tomorrow – the need for secret recordings on Current Affairs television programmes.
