Is UK 'property owning dream' finally over?

[Zardoz Greek]

Is the UK's property owning dream over? Home ownership levels set to fall below French levels at 64% after boom in buy-to-let lending

By John Stevens for the Daily Mail
22:00 01 Jan 2015, updated 22:46 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2893753/Is-UK-s-property-owning-dream-Home-ownership-levels-set-fall-French-levels-64-boom-buy-let-lending.html

EU figures show home ownership levels are at their lowest since 1988
Home ownership figures have fallen by five per cent over the past decade
Eurostat said only 64.6 per cent of Britons are in their own home 
The EU average is 70 per cent and France is 0.3 per cent behind the UK
Landlords in Britain have purchased 2.5 million new homes since 2000
Home owners have only bought 400,000 new built houses since 2000 
Home ownership in Britain is set to fall below France for the first time after the boom in buy-to-let lending in the last decade.

More and more Britons have been pushed into the rental sector, allowing our continental neighbours to catch up, according to latest figures.

The fall in UK home ownership was worsened by the 2008 financial crisis and has undone much of the work by Margaret Thatcher towards her dream of a property-owning democracy.

New research has found that the level of home ownership in Britain has dropped by five percent in a decade	+4
New research has found that the level of home ownership in Britain has dropped by five percent in a decade
Home ownership figures were last this low in Britain back in 1988 with much new stock bought by landlords	+4
Home ownership figures were last this low in Britain back in 1988 with much new stock bought by landlords
The figures from the EU’s official statistics bureau Eurostat show that home ownership in Britain was 64.6 per cent in 2013 compared to 70 per cent in 2005.

The latest rate is only marginally above France’s 64.3 per cent while the EU average is 70 per cent. Romania tops the table with 95.6 per cent of homes being owner-occupied.

On current trajectories, Britain will have fallen behind France in 2014 for the first time since Eurostat started compiling the figures in 1995.

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Home ownership was last this low in 1988, said separate data from the Department for Communities and Local Government. The vast majority of new housing since 2000 has been bought by landlords, it added.

Some 2.5million homes built from 2000-2012 went to the private rented sector with only 400,000 bought by occupiers.

The dramatic changes in the housing market have also been attributed to tougher mortgage standards making it harder for owner-occupiers to borrow. Many buy-to-let borrowers qualify for interest-only loans and can offset interest against tax.

Of the 2.6million additional homes in the private rented sector since 1996, 1.4million have been financed by buy-to-let loans, said the Intermediary Mortgage Lenders Association.

	+4
It has forecast that in two decades, if trends continue, most Britons will be renting for the first time since the early 1970s.

Tory MP Mark Garnier, who is a member of the Treasury select committee, said: ‘If people have given up on the aspiration of owning their own property, that is a big deal. Prices have got outside of people’s reach.’

Kate Barker, a former Bank of England rate-setter, said landlords tend to have larger deposits or other properties from which to draw funds.

‘If you come from a family that hasn’t got a history of home ownership, it’s getting harder to get on the ladder,’ she warned.