'A housing catastrophe': 4 charts show how millennials were priced out of Britain's housing market

LONDON — Young people are spending three times more on housing than their grandparents, according to a report from the Resolution Foundation.

The policy group found that millennials — those born between 1981 and 2000 — are being forced to live in smaller spaces, commute for longer, and wait on average until their 40s to buy a house.

The report found that millenials now spend an eye-watering quarter of their income on housing costs, a figure which has been driven up by a chronic lack of house-building, spiralling rents, and rocketing house prices.

"Britain's housing catastrophe has been 50 years in the making, but while its effects are widespread, it is millennials who are truly at the sharp end," said Lindsay Judge, who co-wrote the report.

"The big danger today is that young people are having to settle for lower quality, longer commutes, and less security in order to afford a place to live, despite spending a record share of their income on housing."

Here are four charts which illustrate the true extent of plummeting homeownership in the UK.

1. Younger people are roughly half as likely to own their own home at 30 as their baby boomer counterparts.

This chart illustrates the home ownership rates of different generations and compares how each has fared at the same age.

As it makes clear, the baby-boomer generation — a catch-all term for the children born in the years following the Second World War — has experienced a dramatically higher home ownership rate from early adulthood through to retirement than any other generation since.

Meanwhile, millenials' home-ownership rates lag far behind their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents at the same age. Today's younger people are roughly half as likely to own their own home at 30 as their baby boomer counterparts.

2. It's been getting progressively worse since 1946.

This chart looks at home ownership rates of five-year birth cohorts from baby boomers onwards.

It shows that the oldest baby-boomers have been the biggest beneficiaries of the growth in home ownership in the last 50 years. In other words, it's been getting progressively worse since 1946.

3. Declining home ownership isn't just a London problem

This chart compares the regional rate of home ownership (as a percentage) between the oldest millenial cohort, born between 1981 and 1985, and an earlier cohort, born between 1961 and 1965.

It shows ownership rates differ sharply between regions: m

But it also shows that declining home ownership rates affect the whole of the UK, not just London: home ownership

4. The same comparison can be made by splitting results according to income levels, rather than by region.

'A housing catastrophe': 4 charts show how millennials were priced out of Britain's housing market

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