Is it really harder to get on the housing ladder?

ONE reason young people struggle to get on the housing ladder (Mail) is that many stay in education into their mid-20s. We left school at 16 and went to work or into training. By our mid-20s we’d been earning for ten years. Expectations were also different. When we married, we rented for a few years to save a 10 per cent deposit for a house.

Mrs I. LANCASTER, Gayton, Wirral. WE BOUGHT our house in the London commuter belt in 1987 and paid four times the price it had been sold to the original owner 11 years earlier. There are many reasons for accelerating house prices, including university debts, people marrying later in life and the immigration tap turned on by Tony Blair. Add that interest rates have been at historically low levels, with loan multiples at high levels, and you have a bun fight.

MICHAEL JEWELL, Reigate, Surrey.

MY WORKING-CLASS sons own their own houses, as do their friends. They have two cars each, houses full of gadgets and take holidays abroad. When I was in my 20s, I couldn’t afford a house or this type of lifestyle. Things always change.

MICK WARREN, address supplied. WE ARE seeing the end of home ownership. How many people have portfolios of rented property when millions of others can’t even get on the ladder? Promises to build 200,000 houses per year is not the answer, unless prices fall in line with wages. People renting throughout their lives have few assets to pass down to their families. We baby boomers may own our own homes, but many are likely to see them used to pay care home fees. Only a return to affordable home ownership for the many not the few will turn the tide for our children and grandchildren. JAMES WIGNALL, Accrington, Lancs.