‘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 Dartford
figures of homeownership, looking back to 1991, 70.65% of Dartford households
were owned by the homeowner, whilst 7.81% of Dartford households were privately
rented, whilst the 2011 census showed home ownership in Dartford had dropped to
67.85% and private rented had increased to 15.3%. Much of the recent rise in
the occurrence of private renting in Dartford 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 Dartford 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 Dartford.
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.
