According to a recent article in The Guardian, official figures show that home ownership in England is at a 30-year low.

The English Housing Survey found the private rented sector has doubled in size since 2004, with ownership at lowest level since 1985. Ministers recently admitted England’s housing market was “broken”, with home ownership a distant dream for millions.

Labour claimed the figures showed that the government was “out of ideas” and had no long-term plan to fix the housing crisis. The Generation Rent campaign group said runaway house price inflation and the difficulty of saving a deposit had trapped millions in private rented housing, “even more [people] than in the days of slum landlords like Rachman”.

Key facts

  • Private rented sector has uncreased in size and accounts for just over 4.5m households – double the 2.3m in 2004.
  • Separate government data shows there were 4.377m private rented households in England in 1961.
  • In 2005-06, 24% of those aged 25-34 were privately renting. This figure is now at 46%.
  • Over the same period, the percentage of those in this age group buying a home with a mortgage plummeted, from 53% to 35%.
  • Increase in the number of children growing up in a privately rented home rather than one owned by their parents.
  • Estimated that there were now about 945,000 more households with dependent children in the private rented sector than there were a decade ago.
  •  The number of households with children in the social rented sector was about 123,000 less than 10 years ago.

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