Number of households not expecting to buy has grown by 50% under Tories, says Labour

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

About 1.75 million people who rent their homes do not believe they will ever be able to buy, an increase of 50% since 2010.

Analysis of the official English Housing Survey by Labour shows the number of households renting privately that don’t expect to be able to buy in the future has increased by 585,000 since the Conservatives came to power.

Renters’ pessimism has grown despite a series of high-profile policies from the government to get more first-time buyers on the housing ladder.

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The figures show that 1.75 million private renters said in 2016-17 that they did not think they would be able to buy their own home in the future, up from 1.16 million in 2009-10.

The number is up by almost 300,000 since 2012 when the then chancellor, George Osborne, introduced the help-to-buy programme, which critics claim boosted demand.

Owner-occupation rates in Britain have been declining since 2003, when the proportion of people owning their home reached its peak of 71%. Since then, population growth, a lack of new housing, the failure to replace social housing sold under the right-to-buy scheme and rising property prices have resulted in the figure dropping to 63%.

The shadow housing secretary, John Healey, who obtained the figures, said: “The dream of buying a home is dying for more and more private renters. With home ownership at a 30-year low and a million fewer under-45s with their own home now than just eight years ago, it’s clear Tory ministers have no answers to the cost of the housing crisis.

“The country badly needs Labour’s long-term plan to back first-time buyers and build a million affordable homes.”

In its green paper on housing, published last month, Labour set out plans to help first-time buyers by giving local people first refusal on new homes and bringing in a new generation of discounted FirstBuy homes linked to local wages.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies found last month that the chances of a young adult on a middle income owning a home in the UK have more than halved in the past two decades. It said an explosion in house prices above income growth had increasingly robbed the younger generation of the ability to buy their own home.

The chancellor, Philip Hammond, focused on helping young buyers to get on the property ladder in the November budget. This came after the Tories failed to win an overall majority in last year’s general election, as younger voters backed Labour.

The government abolished stamp duty for the majority of first-time buyers but was widely criticised after the independent Office for Budget Responsibility said this would push up house prices, benefiting those who already owned homes.

There have, however, been some positive signals, as official figures showed the number of first-time buyers increased to the highest levels since 2006, helped by slowing house-price growth since the EU referendum.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said: “The reality is that the number of owner occupied dwellings increased in 2017, albeit modestly, for the first time in 13 years.

“The Government remains determined to restore the dream of home-ownership to even more people, which it is doing through schemes like Help to Buy and by cutting stamp duty.”