The news that more than half of recent UK graduates are now living with their parents should not surprise anyone who has watched the housing market spiral into absurdity. The so-called 'boomerang generation' is not a lifestyle choice; it is a forced response to a system that has priced young people out of their own future. As the Chief Financial Editor, I view this through the lens of the bottom line: the numbers simply do not add up.
Renting a one-bedroom flat in London now costs more than the median graduate salary, assuming they can even find work that covers the deposit. This is not a social trend; it is a capital flight from the pockets of the young to the landlords who have cornered a rigged market. The government's Help to Buy schemes?
A sugar-rush stimulus that inflated demand without addressing supply, much like quantitative easing that pushed gilt yields to absurd lows. The result is a generation that cannot accumulate capital, cannot form households, and cannot build equity. They are trapped in a rentier economy where the returns to land and existing assets far exceed the returns to labour.
The Bank of England can print money, but it cannot print affordable housing. Until we see a genuine shift in property taxation or a crash in real estate values, the boomerang will keep coming back. Invest in sofa beds, not buy-to-let.
