Northern families feel the brunt of high house prices as home ownership levels halve

TUMBLING levels of home ownership are not confined to London and the South-east, data has shown.

New research by the Resolution Foundation has shown that while much of the focus has been on the capital, home ownership levels have halved since the 1990s in Northern areas thought to be more affordable.

Ownership by young families has fallen by 52pc in West Yorkshire and by 51pc in Greater Manchester – more than some parts of southern England, such as Bristol, where it has dropped 43pc since 1994.

The growth in the number of people renting has been largely ascribed to those born since 1980, who have been forced to share a home because of high housing costs. But there has been a big increase in the number of families living in this way: in 1992, just one in 20 families headed by a 35 to 44-year-old rented; today it is one in five.

That means there are around 6.3m families living in the private rented sector, many of whom are “struggling to save for a housing deposit at the same time as paying rent”, the Resolution Foundation has said.

Lindsay Judge, an analyst at the foundation, said: “This has implications for their living standards in the here and now, but also in the future when their children grow up and they approach retirement without this key asset to draw upon in old age.”

The Resolution Foundation has also argued that simply building more houses “will not necessarily feed through into lower house prices in the short term”, so improvements must be made to the private rented sector, such as making leases longer.

52pc The amount homeownership by young families has dropped in West Yorkshire since the 1990s as house prices rise