- Homeownership among young adults has recovered to 2010 levels
- 39% of people aged 25 to 34 owned their home in 2022/23, up from 33% in 2015.
- 69% of people aged 45-59 own a home in 2022/23, up from 80% in the early 2000s.
Homeownership among young adults has increased to a level not seen since 2010, according to a new study from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).
It revealed that in 2022/23, 39 percent of people aged 25 to 34 owned their home, an increase of 6 percentage points from 33 percent in 2015.
The IFS says there has been a partial recovery in home ownership among 25- to 34-year-olds over the last decade.
Since 2015, there has been a partial recovery in home ownership among 25-34 year olds, rising 6 percentage points to reach 39% in 2022-23.
However, homeownership among young people remains about 20 percentage points lower than the peak seen in 2000, when 59 percent of people ages 25 to 34 owned their homes.
According to the study, the recovery has been concentrated among middle-income people and may be related to the fact that the disposable income of young adults has grown noticeably faster since 2015 than the population as a whole.
Jonathan Cribb, associate director of the IFS, said: “The collapse of home ownership among young adults has been central to policy concerns for some time: not surprising, given that for every 100 young people there were 20 fewer homeowners in 2022 than in 2000.
‘But recent trends are at least positive: with a gradual recovery for 25-34 year olds since 2015, potentially linked to better income growth over that period.
“In fact, we now see that the entire decline in home ownership among younger people actually occurred before 2010.
‘While it is middle-income young adults whose homeownership rates have recovered the most since 2015, they remain the group that has experienced the largest decline since the early 2000s.
‘This modest recovery occurred both before and after the pandemic. It remains to be seen whether rising mortgage rates will stop this trend or even reverse it.’
Despite the recent positive trend among younger people, the opposite appears to be true among those ages 45 to 59, even though 69 percent are homeowners.
For these working-age seniors, the gradual decline in homeownership has continued as generations of people have found it more difficult to access housing and reach these ages.
Homeownership for that age group has fallen 7 percentage points since 2010 and is 11 percentage points below the peak of the early 2000s, according to the IFS.
