Majority of under-40s to rent privately by 2025

Jul 22, 2015 1:20 PM

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.

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It's yet more evidence that yet more Brits are getting stuck in private renting because they can't access social housing or they can't afford overinflated house prices, and the government's gimmicks for first-time buyers are not going to overcome that.

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Not only will private renters outnumber everyone else in the under-40 cohort, private renters will surpass the number of people with mortgages. Pretty soon, the housing market will feature a handful of very rich people trading properties like Panini stickers.

Studio in Mayfair - got. Croft in the Hebrides - got. Semi in Leicester - NEED!

Rising numbers of renters shouldn't be a problem, but while rents are unaffordable, tenancies insecure and homes too often unfit for human habitation, it most definitely is. PwC share our concerns; chief economist John Hawksworth says, "The solution to this doesn’t have to be to get more owner-occupiers, it could be to improve the quality of rented homes and allow for longer tenancies so people have more security in that sector."

With more people on low incomes and pensioners being charged market rents, the housing benefit bill will keep rising. The government desperately needs a Plan B - invest in building more homes and reform the rented sector as John - and we - suggest. 

With every report on housing bearing incrementally worse news for those of us without a brick to our name, the media can often sound like a particularly depressing broken record. But remember that as the number of renters keeps rising so does our political power. 

Please remind your MP that they'll soon be answering to a hell of a lot more angry renters like you. Email them here.

Also reported in the Mirror.