Landlords milking two days wages a week from tenants
Private renters spend 40% of their income on rent, compared with owner occupiers whose mortgage payments average 20% of income, according to the Government’s English Housing Survey published this morning.
That means that renters spend two days a week working to pay off their landlords mortgage – most would prefer to be paying off their own, but house prices are far too expensive. It’s hard to see how this could be characterised as anything other than exploitation.
An initial set of figures for 2012-13 was published in February – today’s more detailed look reveals that:
- Only half of private renters agree that living in their sector is a good way to occupy a home, rather lower than in the other two main tenure groups.
- 73% of private renters were aged under 45 compared with 37% of social renters and just one quarter (27%) of owner occupiers
- A fifth of private renters last year were couples with children – up from 12% in 2008-09
- Over half (55%) of private renters said they anticipated owning their own home in the longer-term. Around a quarter (27%) reported that they expected to still be renting from a private landlord in the longer-term.
This graph makes it clear just how inadequate the private rented sector is – we have proposed a number of policies to fix it in our Renters Manifesto – and sign up here!
Housing costs hitting young workers the hardest
On Saturday our director Alex spoke at the Trade Union Congress’s Big Youth Debate, where he outlined the findings of a joint survey of 18-35 year olds that Generation Rent conducted with the TUC. We found that most young renters are living in unaffordable housing, while a third of young mortgage holders are being stretched.
The full details are below:
Majority of under-40s to rent privately by 2025
With impressive speed after the Budget, the accountancy firm PwC has published its Economic Outlook for the UK, and its prediction that a majority of under-40s will be renting privately by 2025 made the front page of the Guardian this morning.
National study finds tenants optimistic but rental market oppressive
Every year the government runs the English Housing Survey. General findings are published in February, then, to the delight of housing geeks, the juicy detail on the different subsections of the market arrives in July. We’ve taken a look at the findings for 2015-16, published last week.
Home ownership at 30-year low
Just 62.9% of England’s population owns their home – the lowest proportion since 1985. And the private rented population now stands at 4.5m households, up on last year and bigger than in 1961, when slum landlords like Peter Rachman were making tenants’ lives a misery.
These are the big findings of the English Housing Survey Headline Report, the first of two releases of the government-commissioned survey for 2015-16.
At this rate, there will be more private renters than mortgage holders in just five years’ time. It’s already the largest tenure in London.
Renters have been asked to pay for their OWN pension
The Labour Party’s Independent Review of Retirement Income (IRRI) has suggested that workers should be aiming to save 15% of their salary into the pension each month, according to a BBC report.
The other week, in an FT piece that went viral, Rebecca Taylor, director at the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investments, said that 25-year-olds should be aiming to pay an average of £800 a month into their pension for the next forty years. Now this is an average: less now can be balanced out by paying more later. But the message is clear: start now.