Home ownership in England has fallen to its lowest level for 30 years, while the number of people privately renting is now higher than in the early 1960s, according to official figures.

Government data reveals that the private rented sector has doubled in size since 2004, with almost half of all people in England aged 25 to 34 paying a private landlord for their accommodation.



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”.



The latest English Housing Survey, produced by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), found that of the estimated 22.8m households in England, 14.3m – or 62.9% – were owner-occupiers in 2015-16.

It stated that owner-occupation rates “remain unchanged for the third year in a row” – but Labour and others were quick to seize on an accompanying table, which showed that the rate had slipped from 63.6% the previous year. This is down from a peak of 70.9% in 2003 and is the lowest figure since 1985, when it was 62.4%.



By contrast, the private rented sector has ballooned in size and now accounted for just over 4.5m households – double the 2.3m in 2004. The new figure represents 20% of the total, whereas in 2002 it was 10%.

Separate government data shows there were 4.377m private rented households in England in 1961.



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The English Housing Survey said that, while younger people had always been over-represented in the private rented sector, over the past decade the increase “has been particularly pronounced”. In 2005-06, 24% of those aged 25-34 were privately renting. This figure has now leapt to 46%.

Over the same period, the percentage of those in this age group buying a home with a mortgage plummeted, from 53% to 35%.



The report also revealed a surge in the number of children growing up in a privately rented home rather than one owned by their parents. It estimated that there were now about 945,000 more households with dependent children in the private rented sector than there were a decade ago. Meanwhile, the number of households with children in the social rented sector was about 123,000 less than 10 years ago.



In 2015-16 the average private rent in London was £300 per week, about double the £153 figure for outside the capital. On average, those buying their home in England with a mortgage spent 18% of their household income on mortgage payments, whereas rent payments were 28% of household income for social renters, and swallowed up 35% of household income for those renting privately.

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It also emerged that levels of overcrowding as measured by the so-called “bedroom standard” have increased in the social rented sector. At the same time, the proportion of homes judged to be “under-occupied” that were owned by the person living there had risen from 39% (5.3m households) in 1995-96 to 52% (7.4m households) now.



The report also provided fresh evidence that, for those who can afford to buy, the traditional 25-year mortgage may be on the way out. It found that almost all first-time buyers had taken out a repayment mortgage, and that 40% had signed up for a home loan lasting 30 years or more. The average age of a first-time buyer now is 32, up from 31 in 2005-06.



Responding to the figures, John Healey, the shadow housing secretary, said: “After seven years of failure on housing, not only has home ownership fallen, but affordable housebuilding has hit a 24-year low, and rough sleeping has more than doubled.”



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Dan Wilson Craw, director of Generation Rent, said: “The government knows that the housing market is broken but it is failing to do enough to fix it. Ministers need to expand their ambitions to build homes, while reforming the law to provide stability for the millions who will be unable to buy in foreseeable future.”



However, in its white paper the government promised a fresh wave of homebuilding. It said the number of home completions in England had been lower than anywhere else in Europe, relative to the population, for the past three decades.



The DCLG indicated that a fall in the proportion of owner-occupiers from 63.6% in 2014-15 to 62.9% in 2015-16 was not statistically significant, hence its statement in the survey that “owner occupation rates remain unchanged for the third year in a row”.