To think majority owning homes is a historical blip?

[brasty]

Owning a home is talked about as if it is something everyone should achieve. And yet there has only been a very short time historically when the majority of the population were home owners rather than renters. The peak of home ownership was 2001, not the 70s or 80s as many seem to assume when they talk about baby boomers.

"In 1918 the majority, or 77%, of households in England and Wales rented, with the remaining in ownership.

From 1953 ownership started to increase at a faster rate than in previous decades and by 1971 there was an equal percentage of households owning and renting.
Ownership continued to increase, reaching a peak of 69% in 2001, however in the last decade it has fallen to 64%.
Within the rental sector policies following the World Wars impacted on the percentage of those socially renting. In 1918 just 1% of households socially rented and this reached a peak of 31% in 1981.
Between 2001 and 2011, the number of households buying their homes through a mortgage fell by 749,000. Some factors that might have impacted on mortgage buyers are: high house prices, low wage growth and tighter lending requirements.
The percentage of households renting increased in all English regions and in Wales in the decade to 2011. London had the highest percentage of renters, accounting for 50.4% of households in the region."

My inlaws bought their first home in the 1950s and were probably the first in living memory, on both sides of their families, ever to 'own' their home. All my MIL ever went on about was this Thatcherite crap of "Plul yoruself up by the bootstrings!" and "Get on the property ladder!"

If the peak of home 'ownership' (and that's in inverted commas as people buying on mortgages don't 'own' their homes, just equity in them til the ast payment's paid) was early 80s - that would figure. That was around the time MIL was at fever pitch with the home ownership crap.

My family were farmers so had always owned land/houses. Taking a mortgage was a sign of failure to previous generations - something you only did if desperate (I found mortgage papers relating to a farm my family bought in Regency times - the father took the mortgage out but it took a generation to pay off). And other records showing as farms failed badly, they'd sell of a house here, a few acres of land there, start mortgaging...

Only in the 20thC - and the mid 20thC - did people start seeing having a mortgage as 'success' when right throughout history - it meant you'd failed in life.

So yes - blip. FIL also only owned a car for the first time in the 1950s. I think it was that class of people - working class but prosperous - who propelled Thatcher and the ideal of home 'ownership' to become the holy of holies. People like my parents in law who were middle aged my the time Thatch came to power.

And the greed is good creed has become a whole accepted culture, until people who were born after Thatcher's reign, espouse her ideals without even realising it.

Selling off and refusing to allow councils the money to build new council houses, coupled with the 'home ownership is wonderful' thing, worked together to drive up demand. Strangling supply, forced prices up still further and creating a whole new class of rackrenting landlords - with things like the old Fair Rents Commission long gone, that used to control private landlords - also in the mix. And now the whole thing is toxic. (The more little landlords you make, the more likely the tories get voted back in and home 'ownership' becomes a shibboleth).

Why should it be a blip after all someone has to own houses and the most logical person to me to own a property is the person who lives there.

Careful OP ur calling their investments into question,

I agree a council estate had depth, yeah there was always the 'rich' house where the occupiers were teachers, or a member of the public services, and you always had that rough family or 2 (looking back think we ight have been 1 of them lol) but I think the struggle will be to change it back because those people with money in houses are going to fight tooth and nail to stop people building more homes in their patch because they dont want that £100,000 investment to only be the value of the bricks and mortar not some arbitrary value based on other peoples need.

Maybe increasing equality, meritocracy and egalitarianism will all turn out to have been blips too

I wouldn't be in the least surprised. We're in a fast track back to the Edwardian era.