Leaving education, getting a job, buying a home and perhaps starting a family: the path previous generations followed may seem a distant dream to many now.<\/p>\n
But is it getting a bit easier – at least when it comes to getting on the housing ladder?<\/p>\n
Today's prospective first-time buyers may well feel hard done by; they are still worse off than recent generations.<\/p>\n
If you were born in the UK in the mid-1990s you've about a 25% chance of owning your own home, as this chart shows.<\/p>\n
Twenty-somethings in the 1990s were almost twice as likely to be on the housing ladder, the previous generation even more so.<\/p>\n
But before looking at the current picture, what's behind the longer term shift?<\/p>\n
One issue is that property prices have outpaced incomes across many decades.<\/p>\n
In the chart below, housing economist Paul Cheshire puts it starkly, comparing the rise in egg prices with house prices over the past 71 years.<\/p>\n
Changes in the mortgage markets have contributed, but ultimately it's about a lack of housebuilding.<\/p>\n
The government previously estimated that England alone needs another 300,000 dwellings per year to keep up with population change and our preference for living in smaller households.<\/p>\n
But only 208,000 were added last year. We've not built close to 300,000 new homes in a year for at least three decades.<\/p>\n
There are many reasons why, but inflation has been key – from the price of land, to builders' wages and bricks.<\/p>\n
Our analysis shows that the cost of raw materials like timber, steel, plasterboard, concrete and insulation rose in line with general inflation from the 1990s until the Covid-19 pandemic, when they became harder to source.<\/p>\n
That was compounded by the impact of the war in Ukraine, which drove up both the cost of energy – 15% in a single year – for making these materials and for use in construction itself. The war in Iran has pushed prices up further.<\/p>\n
Even before the pandemic, more than one in five construction firms struggled with a lack of skilled staff, exacerbated by Brexit.<\/p>\n