Brits turning against home ownership

by John Fitzsimons on 05 October 2009  |  3 comments
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A quarter of adults in some cities have no desire to own their own home. Good!

A piece of research from the National Association of Estate Agents caught my eye this week.

It was bemoaning the fact that in a number of cities in the UK, more than a quarter of adults have no desire to own their own home.

The cities where adults were least enamoured by the prospect of buying a home are detailed below

According to the trade body, this was due to the combined effects of the recession, high house prices and a lack of mortgage lending, and it demanded that more must be down to halt this decline in demand.

Baloney!

I hate to bash estate agents (for his sins, my father is one) but they are completely wrong on this. It was precisely because everyone was so obsessed with getting on the property ladder, irrespective of whether they could actually afford it, that so many people overstretched and so now face repossession.

Surely it is a good thing that some of those that simply cannot afford to own their own house are not deluding themselves, and putting their entire financial future at risk by obsessing over something out of their reach?

The other way of looking at it is that in most cities in the UK, at least 75% of adults aspire to home-ownership. That's an awful lot, possibly even more than is feasible. To demand that 'something must be done' to increase this even further is absolute nonsense.