At least 70,000 new households will be unable to afford to rent or buy a home in the UK in the next five years even if the Government meets its target of building 200,000 new homes a year.
Research by Savills, the estate agent, said this means a total of 350,000 households in England will not be able to afford to buy or rent houses at market rate by 2020.
Even if the Government builds 200,000 homes a year, inflated house prices mean 70,000 households would not be able to access the market unassisted every year. That’s 350,000 over the five-year term of a parliament.
In London, some households with an income of £60,000 will be priced out of the housing market.
Savills said that the national living wage, which rises to £9 per hour by 2020, will do little to help those households in London and the south where people earning far more than the minimum still cannot afford to rent or buy. Those families are reliant on a shrinking pools of benefits and tax credits. Efforts to increase affordable housing in London have only filled 36 per cent of the gap.
