‘An Englishman’s Home is his Castle’ is the
phrase that was coined in Victorian times as the UK has a reputation for being
a country of home owners .. but the
truth could be further from the point, because in a league of the top 46
economic nations of the world, where owning your property is permissible, the
UK is only ranked no.37.
As I mentioned a
couple of weeks ago, at the end of the First World War, 77% of people rented
their home (the vast majority renting from a private landlord as Council
Housing was still very much in its infancy). Homeownership rose very slowly in
the 1920’s and started to grow as the economy grew after the Great Depression.
However, after the Luftwaffe had flattened huge swathes of housing in the early
40’s, the priority was to get people into clean and decent accommodation .. so
Local Authority’s (Councils) took up the baton and they built large council estates
in the 1950’s and 1960’s.
As the UK economy got back on its feet in
the middle part of the 20th Century and wages rose, people decided
they wanted to own their own home instead of renting. Throughout the post war decades, it became easier
to secure a mortgage. Interestingly, by 1977, 61.6% of 30 to 34 year olds were
owner occupiers with a mortgage compared to 8.7% of 30 to 34 year olds being in
private rented accommodation (the
remaining either being in council housing or living with friends or family).
Ten years later, in 1987, we saw some significant growth in homeownership, as 68.2%
of 30 to 34 year olds had a mortgage and only 4.6% of people privately rented.
A decade later and there wasn’t much change as, in 1997, the homeownership
figure was 68.3% but private renting had jumped to 12.1% in the same 30 to 34
year old age group.
Move on another ten
years to the 2007 figures, and this showed a slight drop in homeownership to
65.8% but renting had continued to increase to 18.7% (in the 30 to 34 year old
age group). The latest set of figures is for 2014, and only 47.2% of 30 to 34
year olds had a mortgage and an eye watering 33.4% of 30 to 34 year olds
privately rent.
When we look at the Grantham
figures of homeownership, looking back to 1991, 63.37% of Grantham households
were owned by the homeowner, whilst 15.14% of Grantham households were
privately rented, whilst the 2011 census showed home ownership in Grantham had
risen to 67.13% and private rented had increased to 15.94%. Much of the recent
rise in the occurrence of private renting in Grantham since the turn of the
Millennium is not because property has become more expensive, but the fact
these 30 somethings haven’t got a
council house to move into (because they were all sold off) – so they have to
rent. The selling of council housing in the 1980’s (a subject I have talked
about in a previous article in the Grantham Property Market Blog) artificially
grew homeownership in the 1980’s, but as these people have got older, the
younger generation didn’t have the same opportunity to buy their council house
in the 1990’s, 2000’s or 2010’s. That is why, unless the council start building
council houses by the acre, and hundreds of acres, private renting will
continue to grow in Grantham.
So if you want blame
anyone .. blame the Grocer’s daughter from Grantham – Mrs T …. but before you do – do remember in the 1970s, the UK was called the
"sick man of Europe" by critics of the UK government, because of
industrial strife and poor economic performance compared to other European
countries culminating with the Winter of Discontent of 1978/9 and if it hadn’t
been for her we wouldn’t be where we are today.
