Getting on the property ladder is a priority for many millennials, but one that can feel like a pipe dream in 2019. There's even a website that can tell you, in seconds, where you can and can't afford to buy a starter flat.
But a report published today by the Resolution Foundation, a think tank which works to improve the lives of people on low to middle incomes, has revealed that a growing property wealth gap seems to be emerging among millennials.
Unsurprisingly, the report found that fewer millennials have been able to buy their own home than people from the generation above – who are typically referred to as "baby boomers".
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
Whereas 50 percent of people born in the 1960s had bought a home by the age of 29, just 37 percent of people born in the 1980s managed it.
But more surprisingly, the report also found that people born in the 1980s who are on the property ladder are just as likely as the older generation to own multiple homes.
The report's author George Bangham told Refinery29: "Millennials aged 30 are half as likely to own any property as baby boomers were at the same age.
"But if a young person today does own a home then they're more likely to have multiple properties. That suggests that, among younger generations, housing wealth is getting more concentrated among a wealthy few."
The report found that around one in ten people in the UK now owns some kind of second home. The number of people who own a second home, buy-to-let or overseas property has doubled since 2001, and the UK's second home wealth now totals a staggering £941 billion.
But encouragingly, the report added that recent government initiatives to make buy-to-let properties a less appealing investment by changing the way they're taxed is having an effect.
"Policy makers have made progress in recent years in changing the tax reliefs and other incentives available for people who own multiple properties. It is too early to know definitively, but it appears that these changes have halted the growth of the buy-to-let sector," the report concluded.
"That said, there remain several challenges for policy makers to consider, to rebalance the housing market more towards first-time buyers and to think more broadly about how housing is taxed fairly and efficiently."
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT