Attitudes in home buying

Some years ago I contributed a chapter to a Reader’s Digest book called The Story of Where You Live. The book paints a fascinating picture of the development of homes, communities and the growing aspirations of those seeking a home. I was reminded of this when the infographic below, that shows the changing attitudes in home buying, arrived from Barratt Homes.

We’ve come a very long way from the poor housing and unhealthy living conditions experienced by much of the population just over a century ago when the Housing and Town Planning Act 1909 came into being.

Although relatively ineffective until after the Second World War, the legislation did prohibit the building of ‘back-to-back’ houses and ‘subterranean’ dwelling units. It also required new homes to be built to certain standards, including the provision of water to each. Importantly it helped define the work of the speculative builders who contributed to the four million houses built in Britain between 1919 and 1939.

Rather than renting, the new middle classes began increasingly to buy their homes with the aid of mortgages. Before the First World War fewer than one in ten houses was owner occupied but the figure had risen to more than three in ten by 1939. Today nearly 65% of people are owner occupiers and housebuilders are doing everything they can to make buying a new home in the UK as painless as possible.

Image credit: Barratt Homes. The first Barratt house, built in the mid-1950s by Laurie Barratt. This led to the foundation of the first Barratt housebuilding company in 1958.

post in association with Barratt Homes