One in six baby boomers has a second home as millennials struggle to buy

Younger generation is set for a bumper £100,000 inheritance – but will have to wait until their sixties

A RECORD one in six baby boomers now owns a second home, according to analysis by a think tank.

The housing wealth boom among people in their fifties and sixties has come at a time when younger families have struggled to get on the property market, causing inter-generational tensions.

According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), about 15 per cent of 55 to 64-year-olds now owns a second property, with most buying them as a means of supporting their pension or salary.

On average, people currently aged 55 to 64 have built up their wealth reserves to £250,000 largely as a result of their property purchases, the IFS said.

According to the Resolution Foundation, second-home ownership in the UK has risen by a third since 2000, with more than one in 10 UK adults, or 5.2million people, now owning a second home.

Meanwhile, since the late Nineties, home ownership among people in their early 20s to mid-30s has slowed, from two in three (65 per cent) middleincome young people owning property, compared with one in four (27 per cent) in 2015/16.

Four in 10 adults own no property and are either renting from social or private landlords.

However, as older generations are unlikely to spend the vast majority of their wealth, millennials could be set for a bumper inheritance, the IFS revealed.

They are expected to inherit £100,000 each on average, the analysis showed, although they are not due to receive the money until they are in their sixties.

Rowena Crawford, an associate director at the IFS and author of the set of reports, said: “Older people do not draw on their wealth much during retirement. The majority of homeowners do not move or access their housing wealth, and even financial wealth is drawn down only slowly.

“This means that most wealth held by retired people is likely to be bequeathed to future generations, rather than spent.

“This will have implications for the level and distribution of resources among current working-age individuals, particularly those with wealthy parents and few siblings.

“Given the increased freedom people now have over how they spend their pension wealth in retirement, carefully monitoring how the use of wealth evolves in future will be important, both for the living standards of the retirees themselves, and also for younger generations.”