THERE has been a 30 per cent increase between 2000-02 and 2012-14 in the proportion of adults who own multiple properties, rising 1.6 million to 5.2 million people (one in ten adults) in that period, new analysis published by the Resolution Foundation has found.
Combined with falling home ownership since the early 2000s, the rise of second home-owning in 21st Century Britain has underpinned the increasing concentration of property wealth within a declining proportion of families. In contrast to the one in ten adults with multiple sources of property wealth, four in ten (40 per cent) adults have no property wealth at all, up from 35 per cent in 2000-02 and the same level as in 1993-95.
The analysis finds that alongside an increase in the number of people with additional property, the average value of assets held in these properties has increased by 20 per cent in real terms between 2000-02 and 2012-14 – from £125,000 to £150,000. The wealth held in additional properties had a gross value of £760 billion in 2012-14 – 15 per cent of the £5.2 trillion held in gross property wealth overall.
Multiple homeowners are most likely to be baby boomers, the group born between 1946 and 1965 and currently aged 52-71. Boomers account for half (52 per cent) of all the wealth held in additional properties, with far higher additional property asset levels than those now in their seventies and eighties had at the same age. Generation X – born 1966 to 1980 and currently aged 37-51 – accounts for a further quarter (25 per cent) of additional property wealth.
