In 2000, 42% of households in England were buying their home with a mortgage. By 2013-14 the share was 31%, and in 2024-25 it was 29%, according to figures published with the English Housing Survey. In number, that is 7.3 million households, down from 8.6 million, in a country that gained 4.7 million households over the same years.
That is a question for supply as well as for buyers. Most new homes in England are built by private developers, and they build at the pace they can sell. On 28 October the Office for Budget Responsibility said that higher interest rates since late 2022, with "other affordability pressures and weak effective demand", have "weighed on the commercial viability of residential development". We set out its forecast in 190,000 fewer homes in the forecast.
This piece sets out who builds homes in England now, and who else could if fewer households can borrow.
Who owns a home now.
The English Housing Survey puts every household in one of four groups: those who own outright, those buying with a mortgage, private renters, and social renters, who rent from a council or housing association.
| Share of households in England | 2000 | 2003 | 2024-25 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Own outright | 28.4% | 29.7% | 35.5% |
| Buying with a mortgage | 42.2% | 41.2% | 29.3% |
| Renting privately | 10.0% | 10.8% | 18.9% |
| Renting from a council or housing association | 19.5% | 18.3% | 16.3% |
Owner occupation peaked in 2003, at 71% of households. Since then the two kinds of owner have moved apart. The share who own outright rose by 6 points. The share buying with a mortgage fell by 12, and the share renting privately rose from 11% to 19%.
Most of that change happened in one decade. Since 2013-14 the share of households with a mortgage has stayed between 28% and 31% each year.
First-time buyers are older. The survey puts their average age in 2024-25 at 34, up from 32 in 2019-20. Their average deposit was £78,131. The median was £36,500, so a smaller number of much larger deposits pulls the average up.
Prices have risen much faster than pay. In 1997 the median home in England cost 3.5 times the median annual earnings of a full-time worker. By 2021 it cost 9.1 times. In 2025 the ratio was 7.6, the lowest since 2015, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Pay was slow to recover from the financial crisis. Average weekly earnings in Great Britain, adjusted for prices, fell after 2008 and did not get back above their 2008 level for good until 2023, about 15 years later. In the three months to August 2026, regular pay was growing 0.6% a year faster than prices.
Who builds them.
The government's house building statistics record who develops each home, in three groups: private developers, housing associations and councils. In the statistics, the group refers to "the nature of the organisation responsible for the development", which is not always the firm on site, and some housing association homes are sold on the open market. The statistics count homes as building inspectors sign them off and miss some, so the government's fuller measure of net additions to the stock is higher. But they are the only national series that shows who develops new homes.
In 2025-26, on provisional figures, 143,250 homes were completed in England on this measure. Private developers accounted for 104,540 of them, 73%. Housing associations accounted for 36,060, the most in any year since the series began in 1969-70. Councils accounted for 2,660.
In each of the three years to 1977-78, councils completed more homes than private developers complete now. In 1977-78 they completed 115,840, 44% of the total. By 1989-90 they completed 14,700. From 1994-95 to 2009-10 they completed fewer than 1,000 a year. Housing associations now complete far more homes than councils, but their record year is less than a third of what councils completed in 1977-78.
The private figure moves with the market. Private developers completed 147,170 homes in 2007-08 and 83,180 in 2010-11, after the financial crisis. Last year's 104,540 was the fewest since 2014-15. Starts give the earlier signal. Private starts fell to 80,190 in 2024-25, the fewest since 2009-10, and recovered to 96,330 in 2025-26 on provisional figures.
Why fewer borrowers means fewer homes.
A developer building a large site does not finish it all at once. It builds and sells in phases. The 2018 independent review of build out, led by Sir Oliver Letwin, found that the pace on large sites was held back by "the limits on the rate at which the market will absorb" homes of the same type. When fewer buyers can borrow, sales slow, and so does building.
Recent governments have supported buyers directly. Help to Buy financed 387,195 purchases in England between 2013 and 2023. Your First Home, confirmed in the Budget on 28 October, works the same way at a smaller scale. It has £4.7 billion from 2027-28 to 2031-32 to help around 70,000 households, and the Treasury says it will "support the delivery of an estimated 20,000 new homes". The OBR expects it "to only have a marginal impact on housing supply". We set out its terms in Your First Home.
Who else builds.
If fewer households can buy, more of the homes they need would have to be built to rent. Three kinds of landlord could take on more of that role, and each has its own limit.
Housing associations and councils. Much of their building depends on government grant. The Social and Affordable Homes Programme is "more than £40 billion over 10 years", and the Budget added £1.5 billion for around 10,000 more homes, prioritised for social rent. The OBR puts the grant needed for each social rent home at "between around £150,000 and £200,000 depending on location". To illustrate the cost, it assumes that returning council housebuilding to 1980s levels would need at least 22,000 more homes a year on top of the programme. If all of them needed grant, the extra cost would be "between £3 billion and £4 billion each year".
The demand for those homes is on record. At 31 March 2025, 1.34 million households were on council waiting lists in England, the most since 2014. At 31 March 2026, 135,580 households were living in temporary accommodation.
Build-to-rent. Investors build whole blocks of homes to let and keep them. The British Property Federation counted 147,670 completed build-to-rent homes across the UK in the first quarter of 2026, 12% more than a year earlier. Building has slowed. Completions over the year fell 24% to 15,509, and starts fell 65%. Build-to-rent made up 8% of the 210,000 new homes completed in Great Britain in 2025.
Private landlords. In the government's 2024 survey of private landlords in England, 31% said they planned to reduce the number of homes they let over the next two years. In 2018 it was 16%. From April 2027 rental profits in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will be taxed at 24%, 44% and 49%, up from 20%, 40% and 45%.
What the state can now do with land.
One change in the law gives the public sector a cheaper route to land. A compulsory purchase order in England can now direct that compensation is assessed under section 14A of the Land Compensation Act 1961, inserted by the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023. Where it does, "it is to be assumed that no planning permission would be granted for development on the relevant land". In general, the owner is paid for the land as it is, and for any permission it already has, but not for the prospect of permission it might get. That prospect is what the industry calls hope value.
The power applies only where the order itself includes the direction. The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 extended it to land bought on behalf of parish and community councils, as we set out in hope value and the new power for parish councils. Why the difference matters is in how land gets its value.
What could change the number who can borrow.
How many households can borrow depends on what they earn and what borrowing costs. On cost, the OBR expects the average rate on outstanding mortgages to rise from 4% in 2026 to around 5% in 2031. That is above the 3% average since the financial crisis, though in the OBR's words "significantly lower than over the decades leading up to 2008". Mortgage payments would then equal 4.25% of all household disposable income, the highest share since 2009. On earnings, the newest question is artificial intelligence.
Intelligence from the Bank’s Agents suggests AI adoption is gradually reducing demand for highly automatable jobs in some industries, with firms often slowing hiring or leaving vacancies unfilled to increase output without a proportional rise in headcount.Bank of England, Monetary Policy Report · Ground Level, July 2026
The Bank of England's July report also says the effects of AI "remain highly uncertain". Nearly 90% of firms in the Bank's Decision Maker Panel survey reported no material impact of AI on their employment over the past three years. For the next three, they expected AI to reduce employment by around 0.4% a year and to raise productivity by around 0.9% a year.
Those are firms' expectations, not outcomes. On our reading, they matter here because jobs are where buyers come from. If fewer people are hired, fewer reach the point of buying, and the pool of buyers that private building depends on shrinks further. One gap is in the data. In April the Office for National Statistics said it does not track the relationship between AI adoption and graduate employment.
What to watch.
- The next English Housing Survey, for whether the share of households with a mortgage moves from 29%.
- The quarterly house building statistics, for private starts. They fell to their lowest since 2009-10 in 2024-25.
- The Bank of England's decision on 5 November. Bank Rate is 3.75%.
- Build-to-rent starts, which the British Property Federation publishes each quarter.
- The Bank of England's Decision Maker Panel, for whether firms' expectations of AI's effect on jobs turn into falls they report.
- The list of price caps for Your First Home, which the government says will be published shortly.
Sources: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Definitions of general housing terms, new build dwelling tenure; Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, English Housing Survey 2024-25, Headline Report, Annex Tables 1.1, and chapters on first-time buyers; Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Live Table 213, permanent dwellings started and completed by tenure, England, financial years, from Housing supply: indicators of new supply, 2026 Q2; Office for National Statistics, Housing affordability in England and Wales: 2025, 26 March 2026, and house price to workplace-based earnings ratio, Table 1c; Office for National Statistics, Average weekly earnings in Great Britain, EARN01, real average weekly earnings, 20 October 2026; Office for Budget Responsibility, Economic and fiscal outlook, October 2026; HM Treasury, Budget 2026, 28 October 2026; Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Your First Home, 28 October 2026; Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Help to Buy (equity loan scheme): data to 31 May 2023; Independent review of build out, final report, October 2018; Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Social housing lettings in England, April 2024 to March 2025, and Statutory homelessness in England, January to March 2026; British Property Federation, Savills and Molior, Build to Rent statistics, Q1 2026, 14 April 2026; Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, English Private Landlord Survey 2024; Land Compensation Act 1961, section 14A; Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, section 190; Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, section 113; Bank of England, Monetary Policy Report, July 2026; Office for National Statistics, freedom of information response FOI-2026-3465, 17 April 2026. The shares of completions, the changes in percentage points and the household numbers are our own arithmetic on these figures.