Margaret Thatcher’s dream turns to dust: the days of easy home buying are over

theguardian.com:

In 1981 Margaret Thatcher told the Tory party conference “The family is the basic unit of our society and it is in the family that the next generation is nurtured”.

The then prime minister added: “Our concern is to create a property-owning democracy and it is therefore a very human concern. It is a natural desire of Conservatives that every family should have a stake in society and that the privilege of a family home should not be restricted to the few.” Owning, in other words, was better than renting, morally as well as financially.

The dream promised by Thatcher, of easily accessible home ownership, such that hard-working people might build a future for themselves and their families based on a secure home, is for swathes of the population well and truly over. As Toby Helm reports from the Yorkshire constituency of Selby and Ainsty, many voters in the forthcoming byelection see home ownership not only as a remote prospect, due to its cost, but also as an unattractive one. There’s too much risk and stress, they think, when rising interest rates can lead to mortgage repayments that blow family finances apart.

These are workers, not shirkers, as Thatcher would have put it, people with responsible, skilled and demanding jobs. They are young and not-so-young, as it is now possible to grow well into middle age and have little prospect of getting a foot on the housing ladder. Renting, meanwhile, is also unappealing and may become more so, as landlords seek to recoup their rising borrowing costs by putting up rents.

Only older owner-occupiers, sitting pretty with paid-off mortgages on homes they bought long ago, are relatively unscathed, although even they are likely to see the values of their property drop, and might be affected