If we want to make home ownership more affordable for more young people seeking security of tenure for their home, the answer is to make home ownership less attractive as a form of investment. | OPINION
Like a lot of people who care about the state of the world we’re leaving to our children and grandchildren , I was pleased to see the period of spiralling house prices come to an end a few years back and prices start falling.
Until recent years, first-home buyers used to be able to load themselves up to the gunnels in debt and monthly payment obligation, secure in the knowledge that, after a few years of high growth in nominal wages, those repayments would be reduced to a much more manageable share of their income. Get it? We’re suffering the wider economic disadvantages of huge household debt without the commensurate advantage of a higher rate of home ownership. The rate of home ownership is actually falling slowly as the oldies with high rates of home ownership are dying and being replaced by newly formed, young households, very few of which can afford a mortgage.
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