In her first conference speech as the Tory’s new leader in 1975, the grocer’s
daughter from Grantham, Margaret Thatcher, asserted her conviction in a ‘property-owning democracy’.
Although Thatcher didn’t conceive the saying – (that credit
belonged to Conservative MP Noel Skelton in 1923), it encapsulated what she
thought Britain should be.
Through prudence, saving and hard work, she believed that
everyday British families should be able to purchase their own homes. Thus,
giving them security, self-esteem and independence and freeing them from the
nanny state of local authority landlords.
Although
that idea was a Labour idea initially in the mid-1970s, Margaret Thatcher
introduced legislation (Right-To-Buy) in 1980 to allow local authority tenants
to buy their own council homes at significant discounts. In the 1980s,
homeownership boomed (although it had been on the increase for the previous two
decades), and she led the country in an economy with which house buying became
a national passion.
Between 1981 and 1990, home ownership went up from 11.88m
to 15.47m.
The
other lesser-known fact of the Right-to-Buy legislation in 1980 was it stopped
local authorities from building new council houses.
Fundamental
to her idea was that government (central or local), which had built between 30%
and 45% of all homes in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, should stop providing homes and
let the market provide them.
The proportion of homes owned rose from 55.4% in
1980 to 65.7% during Thatcher’s reign as PM.
A few days ago, the housing element of the 2021 Census was released,
and it has shown the proportion of home ownership had fallen to its lowest
level since 1985.
The proportion of households owned in the country fell from 64.1%
to 62.5% between 2011 and 2021, the lowest level for the past 37 years, when
the figure was 61.6%.
In the meantime, the proportion of privately rented households has
surged to its highest since the late 1960s, with 20.4% of households
renting from a private buy-to-let landlord.
This means the proportion of British households in private rented
accommodation has more than doubled in the past two decades, from the 9.5%
recorded in the 2001 census.
So, let’s look at the local stats for the Neath Port Talbot council area.
The percentage of households owned in Neath
Port Talbot has dropped from 68.7% in 2011 to 66.7% in 2021.
But would it surprise you to know
that even though the percentage/proportion of homeownership has dropped, the
actual number of households owned has increased!
The number of owned households in Neath Port
Talbot has grown from 41,479 in 2011 to 41,610 in 2021, a rise of 0.3%.
So, what explains the
contradiction of reducing homeownership, yet the number of households owned has
increased?
One simple reason – the number of
privately rented accommodation has grown even more!
The number of privately rented households in Neath
Port Talbot has grown from 7,258 in 2011 to 8,768 in 2021, a rise of 20.8%.
Over the coming weeks and months,
I intend to drill down further into these stats nationally and locally.
Even though homeownership has
increased in terms of pure numbers, the proportion of homeowners with a
mortgage has dropped.
Just some headlines to whet your
appetite.
As I said above, 64.1% of
householders in Britain owned their own home in 2021 (of which 30.8% owned
their home outright and 33.3% with a mortgage).
In 2021, of the 62.5% of homeowner
households, those without a mortgage has increased to 32.8%, and those with a
mortgage has dropped to 29.7%.
So, has Thatcher’s dream been
smashed?
Of course, nationally, home
ownership is at the lowest level in many decades due to several factors,
including the late 1980s and 2008 housing crash, negative equity, the credit
crunch and increased mortgage regulation.
Yet, at the same time, as every single local authority in Britain
has seen an increase in the number and proportion of private renters over the
past 20 years, the entrepreneurial property-owning spirit has moved into the
ownership of private buy-to-let property. The market has undoubtedly filled the
housing gap that the councils and local authorities left in the 1980s.
These are interesting times, and I shall share more insights in
the coming weeks and months.
Let me know your thoughts on the information above.
