Our market watch report reveals how young people are struggling to rent and buy and why we need to retrofit our homes

A pandemic induced rush to move to beautiful, rural areas has seen the cost of homes boom in Richmondshire, which consistently topped the Land Registry price growth tables in 2020 and 2021.

Across Britain, an average first-time buyer type home is now 7.2 times the average salary, up from 6.9 times in 2019.

The average 10 per cent deposit for a first-time buyer home has risen by 17 per cent, to £22,409 and the average monthly mortgage payment for those on the first rung of the ladder is now £1,032. This monthly outgoing is 39 per cent higher than in 2019.

Kate Eales, head of regional agency at Strutt & Parker, says: “Affordability is a long-standing barrier for first time buyers looking at homeownership.

“There are several factors at play here. Across the country, the pipeline of new properties coming to the market for sale has not kept up with demand, and there is also a lack of suitable housing coming through for first-time buyers.

“A decade of mostly upward rents has put further pressure on saving for a deposit and a rising market means that the goalposts have kept moving.

“All this has been exacerbated in recent months with rising interest rates, making mortgages more expensive, while inflation is driving down real income.”

Those who rent also continue to struggle. Recent figures from Dataloft show that those under 30 years old are facing a cost-of-renting crisis with four-in-ten now spending more than 30 per cent of their pay on rent, representing a five-year high.

Rents in the UK have risen by an average of 8.3 per cent over the past year, pushing them to 15.7 per cent above pre-pandemic levels. Inner London saw the fastest rental price hike in the UK over the past year as rents climbed 33.6 per cent compared to the same time last year.

Meanwhile, the number of homes available to rent in the UK continued to fall last month. There were nine per cent fewer rental properties available in July than at the same time last year and 52 per cent fewer than two years ago. London recorded the largest fall in stock, down 37 per cent year-on-year.

While the statistics above are depressing, there is also some good news for some of those who bought new-build leasehold homes only to have the developer sell the lease to another company with an option to double the annual ground rent payment every 10 years.

After Competition and Markets Authority action, thousands of leaseholders who paid a doubled ground rent will receive refunds and nine more companies will remove these costly terms from leasehold contracts.

The CMA has secured undertakings from nine companies that bought freeholds from Taylor Wimpey and a further four national developers, Crest Nicholson, Redrow, Miller Homes and Vistry, have also agreed to work with the firms that purchased their freeholds to remove doubling terms.

This will help 5,000 households throughout the UK, with many who paid a doubled ground rent receiving a refund. All nine firms must now remove contract terms that cause ground rents to double every 10 years.

The companies will also be forced to ditch contract terms so that ground rent increased in line with the Retail Price Index. The action brings the total number of homeowners that have benefitted from the CMA’s investigation to more than 20,000.

For those still waiting for justice, Secretary of State for Levelling Up Greg Clark said: “The Government will continue to work with the CMA to continue challenging industry on its practices, so we can ensure more leaseholders get the fair deal they deserve.”

Interesting statistics from Unlatch, a progression and aftercare platform for developers and housebuilders, reveals that the number of new-build listings in Britain has declined by 40 per cent in the past year and 50 per cent since the start of the pandemic.

The research shows that in January 2020, when COVID-19 was starting to make headlines, there were a total of 48,752 new-build homes listed for sale but now there are only 25,468 new-build properties for sale.

The South West saw the greatest decline with listings down 51.3 per cent over the past year. However, the smallest annual drop has been reported in Yorkshire and the Humber, with just a 14.4 per cent decline.

And finally, a warning. England would use all of its carbon budget on housing alone if the Government sticks to its pledge to build 300,000 homes a year.

The research paper by Science Direct says that retrofitting existing houses to make them energy efficient, cutting the number of second homes and buy-to-lets and making people live in smaller buildings would be more sustainable.

“England can’t go on building new houses forever and needs to start thinking about better and more systematic solutions as to how we are going to house everyone within our environmental limits,” says Dr Sophus zu Ermgassen, from the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent.