Young tenants 'pay £44,000 more in rent by age 30' than parents did

The combination of falling home ownership and rising costs in the private rented sector mean that today’s younger generation will have spent £44,000 more on rent by the time they reach 30 compared to the baby boomers.

That’s the view of the Resolution Foundation, a think tank, which has analysed baby boomers - born between 1946 and 1965 - and younger renters. 

Some 63 per cent of baby boomers owned their own home by the age of 30, but that figure for today’s youngest adult generation is around 42 per cent. 

The think tank says that combining a downward shift in home ownership with what it calls “the rising cost of renting” the analysis finds that millennials have spent £44,000 more on rent than the baby boomers by the time they reach 30.

The foundation says that the extra spending on rent has reduced young people’s living standards and made it harder to save for a deposit for a house. It notes that that the extra spending on rent is more than the average deposit for a first-time buyer today of £33,000.

But it says that a major housebuilding programme is likely to find support across the generations, contrary to popular perception, and says surveys show that baby boomers’ support for homes being built in their local area has almost doubled in recent years, from 29 per cent in 2010 to 56 per cent in 2014.