Gove’s vow to rescue UK’s ‘boomerang generation’ longing to buy own homes
As poll warns that voters who can’t get on property ladder will desert Tories...
MICHAEL GOVE has vowed to shake up banking rules to help adults still living in their parents’ homes gain a foothold on the property ladder.
Revealing plans to force lenders to be more generous to young borrowers, the Levelling Up Secretary evoked the 1980s sitcom Sorry!, in which Ronnie Corbett played a middle-aged man still living with his mother and father. Speaking to The Mail on Sunday, Mr Gove said a situation that was once played for laughs has become a sad reality for many.
His pledge to help the socalled ‘boomerang generation’ enter the property market comes after pollsters warned No10 that voters in their 20s and 30s would abandon the Conservatives at the next Election if their ambitions to own a home continue to be thwarted.
In 1995, two-thirds of people aged between 25 and 34 owned their own property – now only about a quarter do. The phrase ‘boomerang generation’ refers to young adults forced by the high cost of housing to return to live with their parents after a time living independently, often as students.
As well as targeting those living with their parents, Mr Gove’s reforms should also help tenants – leading to banks lending to those who can show their regular rental payments are equal to, or higher than, the expected mortgage payments on their first home.
He also pledges to help renters save, to provide new council houses, and to extend Government help to benefit claimants struggling with mortgage payments. Mr Gove writes: ‘More than half of those in the private rented sector could currently afford the repayment costs on a mortgage but just 3 per cent have the savings necessary to put together a deposit and meet the lenders’ requirements for a typical first-time buyer’s property. We are looking closely at what more can now be done to help’.
However, the plans, which are being discussed by Mr Gove, Boris Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak, are being complicated by rising interest rates and the cost-of-living crisis, which will make property ownership even more expensive.
Mr Gove has admitted that the UK Government’s target of building 300,000 new homes a year is unlikely to be hit, leaving a relaxation of mortgage finance rules as the ‘fastest lever he can pull’, according to a Whitehall source.
The move comes as a poll for The Mail on Sunday suggests that the Tories are in danger of losing the next Election unless they help young people on to the housing ladder. Pollster James Johnson, a former No10 adviser, said that people in their 20s and 30s facing unaffordable property prices and high rent were in danger of deserting the Conservative Party.
House prices have tripled in the past 20 years, rising much faster than average incomes. And middle-class young adults employed in modestly paying jobs and with no family wealth to fall back on are the most disenchanted.
Mr Johnson, who is unrelated to the Prime Minister, said: ‘The Conservative Party is in real trouble. The people among these social grades who voted Tory in 2019 expected help. At that election, many of Britain’s inbetweeners – those who are just above the threshold for social benefits yet remain short of money – had backed Boris Johnson for other reasons.
‘He had a solution to the Brexit impasse which had crowded out the domestic issues they cared about. But they will not be afraid to change their minds if the Conservatives do not deliver.’
The survey of 2,184 voters, conducted by JL Partners, discovered that more than six in ten people who mentioned housing as a key issue were under the age of 40.
Mr Gove told the MoS: ‘The receding prospect of home ownership has meant young people stuck in the family home or in the private rented sector, unable to put down roots in a place they love with the people they love... so we need to repair the broken property ladder and fix our dysfunctional housing market.’
Mr Gove also promised to ‘prioritise beauty’ in his approach to housebuilding. In so doing, he pledges to ‘take on’ the ‘big housebuilders, used to imposing their wishes on communities’, adding that he will ‘support smaller, more local, housebuilders which have been squeezed out the market in the last few years.
‘And I will also ensure that more of the profits they make from getting planning permission are shared with local people to invest in their communities.’
Mr Gove’s remarks were criticised by the Home Builders Federation last night.
A spokesman said: ‘While these announcements may grab headlines, we need to see proper solutions that reduce delays or housing supply will fall.’
‘The broken property ladder must be fixed’