Radical changes are needed to tackle the complexity of the modern housing industry, argues the CML…

Housing careers used to be fairly straightforward - leave home, buy first home, move up housing ladder, perhaps trade down in retirement. But the world has changed, with more people now dipping in and out of home-ownership, owning property they do not live in, or living in property they do not own.

The Council of Mortgage Lenders recently looked at all the issues and concluded that policymakers should develop a more holistic approach to housing market issues.

The research revealed the following:

• As many as a fifth of first-time buyers (that is, people who are not currently home-owners) are in fact "returners" who have at some point in the past been home-owners;
  
  
• The traffic is two-way: around 15% of people moving into private renting in 2005-6 were previously home-owners;
  
  
• A significant minority of people - around 10% - own a property that is not their current home, and this is sometimes instead of rather than in addition to their current home;
  
  
• The number of second homes in England has risen by 30% over the past decade;
  
  
• Around 900,000 men and 1.2 million women are couples "living apart together", who maintain their own individual properties;
  
  
• The rise of the tenant-cum-landlord: typically younger people who cannot afford to buy a property where they work, but buy one in a cheaper area and let it, to get a foot on the property ladder.

Paul Samter, CML economist, commented: "Given the considerable complexities of modern life and the increasing interactions across the tenures, perhaps it is time for the government to develop a more holistic approach to housing market issues. 

“A good starting point would be to focus on policies delivering an adequate supply of high-quality housing, assisting the mobility of households within and between tenures and an equality of treatment for those in need regardless of their tenure."