Around 1.9 million aspiring homeowners do not think they will get on the property ladder like their parents, research has shown.
The latest research from the Homeowners Alliance, which surveyed 2,000 adults – 1,326 of whom were homeowners and 531 were renters – 73% of aspiring homeowners say their parents owned a home, equal to five-and-a-half million people, but only 48% expect to own a home themselves.
This is equal to around 3.6 million and is a drop of 25% compared to the previous year.
Around 52% say they do not expect to be able to own a home, which is equivalent to 3.9 million.
However, 71% of those who do not own a home aspire to do so, which is an estimated 7.5 million people.
Around 60% of those surveyed pointed to high house prices as the reason for not owning a property, followed by 44% citing saving for a deposit.
A third said the ability to afford monthly mortgage repayments dissuaded them from owning property, and 31% said their ability to be approved for a mortgage was a hurdle.
Aspiring homeowners ‘giving up’ on ‘dream of homeownership’
Homeowners Alliance’s chief executive Paula Higgins said that people were “giving up on their dream of homeownership”.
“The Government has failed aspiring homeowners and continues to degrade the life chances of young people by continually not building enough homes.
She said a shortage of new homes had led to “rocketing house prices”, which left many “aspiring homeowners” to be more reliant on the Bank of Mum and Dad, Government schemes or longer-term mortgages. The latter, Higgins said, could cost more for younger homeowners, with more reliance on Government schemes and longer mortgage terms being indicators that younger borrowers found it difficult to get onto the property ladder.
“This shortage of new homes has led to rocketing house prices, leaving aspiring homeowners dependent on Mum and Dad to bolster savings or locking themselves into longer-term mortgages that cost them more in the long run.
“While over a decade of low mortgage rates helped the over-35s to buy a place, in today’s broken Britain, homeowners rely on Government schemes to get them out of this mess and bridge the affordability gap – except the Government’s flagship Help to Buy programme has ended with nothing to fill the void,” Higgins added.
She continued that the housing market was at a “tipping point”, with four million of the seven-and-a-half million aspiring homeowners thinking that they will ever be able to own their home, and almost two million uncertain of whether they could follow in the footsteps of their home-owning parents.
“We know that the fewer people that own, the worse the prospects of homeownership are for their children. With the upcoming election, a key issue will be how the parties plan to build more homes and provide much-needed support to first-time buyers,” Higgins said.
