Number renting soars but ownership still the goal
Wednesday, 6 July 2011 2:48 PM
The Government has recently published the findings of two major studies into public attitudes towards housing in England. Oliver Luft reports.
It doesn’t take an expert in macroeconomics to deduce that the soaring number of people living in rented accommodation reflects, in part, the difficulty some first-time buyers are having taking their first steps onto the property ladder.
In fact, the number of people renting in England has increased by 55 per cent in the last six years, according to the Department of Communities and Local Government’s annual English Housing Survey. It found that there were 3.35 million renters in the country last year, up from 2.15 million in 2003/2004.
With greater competition for rental property and rising rents, it’s little wonder that tenants have a more negative outlook on the housing market than homeowners.
A further study by the Department into public opinion on housing, released this month as part of the British Social Attitudes survey, paints a telling picture of tenants’ attitudes.
According to the second report, private tenants and those living in housing association properties were more likely to say that house prices were too high than homeowners. Overall, 49 per cent of people believe that prices are too high in their area, but this rose to 66 per cent of renters and 64 per cent of those in social housing. Only two per cent of the survey sample thought that house prices were too low, while 43 per cent believed they were “about right”.
The majority of renters (57 per cent) also said they believed rent levels were too high in their local area.
A major finding of the study was that the dominant British attitude – that it’s better to own than to rent – has changed very little over the last 20 years, with 86 per cent of the 2010 respondents saying they would prefer to buy than to rent if given the choice, and just 14 per cent preferring to rent. However, only 17 per cent of renters actually expected to be able to buy a home in the near future.
“There remains a strong preference for buying, rather than renting a home, among the general public and this has changed little over the past two decades,” the study said.
“Similarly, the proportion of renters who expect to buy in the near future has
changed little in recent years.”
But while the British public's faith in home ownership was unwavering, the survey respondents expressed varying views on why it was so important.
“The public do not perceive one stand-out advantage of owning a home rather than renting, or vice versa, with different sections of the population identifying a range of different advantages; household income and composition appear to be particularly important in linking to perceptions of advantages and disadvantages of the different tenures,” the study said.
One issue that everyone could get behind, however, was the need to improve access to the housing market, with the study noting that "in order to make homes more affordable, people think the government should give financial assistance to first-time buyers, and get banks to increase access to mortgages”.
It does appear that the Government is taking steps in this direction, with Housing Minister Grant Shapps having recently outlined plans for FirstBuy, a shared equity scheme that loans first-time buyers 20 per cent of their deposit (click here for our guide to FirstBuy). Shapps has also called on mortgage lenders to do more to make it easier for friends to jointly buy property.
But it’s early days. And only a repeat of the British Social Attitudes survey in six or seven years’ time will tell if this will be enough to ameliorate the predicament in which many renters-cum-first-time buyers find themselves.
Want to be the first to know when we break a story? Follow @AboutProperty on Twitter and subscribe to our free weekly newsletter.
-
Tags:
- first time buyers ,
- renting ,
- tenants ,
- trends ,
- uk property news
