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More home owners move over to private rented sector
More people are quitting home ownership to become private tenants, than are leaving the private rented sector to become home owners.
The trend is identified in the latest English Housing Survey, published yesterday, which estimates a total of 22m households in England in 2011/12.
It underlines that home ownership levels have continued to drop as the number of households in private rented accommodation has grown.
Of the total number of households, most (65%) were nevertheless owner-occupied, with 17% socially rented and 17% privately rented.
The number of owner-occupied homes stood at 14.8m from 2005/6, but in 2001/12 had dropped to 14.4m. At the same time, the number of privately rented households has gone from 2.4m to 3.8m.
The report also found that average gross household annual income was £40,500 for owner-occupiers, £30,100 for private tenants, and £17,600 for social tenants.
Owner-occupiers typically spent £141 on mortgage payments, while social tenants paid £83 a week on rent, and private tenants spent the most – £164 a week on average.
The report also goes into tenancy deposit protection, and says that 70% of private tenants had their deposits returned in full, 17% received part of their deposit money back, and 13% had none of it returned. However, a large proportion of tenants – 26% – did not know if their deposit had been protected in the first place.
A total of 59% private tenants aspired to buy their own homes, says the report. However, more households moved from the owner-occupied sector to the private rented sector (150,000 households) than moved from the private rented sector into owner-occupation (116,000 households).
Tenants were also asked why tenancies had ended. Around four-fifths (81%) ended because the tenant wanted to move, 10% ended their tenancy by mutual agreement, and 9% of households were asked to leave by their landlord of agent.
Of those who were asked to leave, over half (55%) said it was because the landlord or agent wanted to sell the property or use it for themselves. The remaining 46% cited other reasons, including non-payment of rent, or difficult with payment of rent via Local Housing Allowance.
