Young adults pay heaviest price for Britain’s exploding mortgage timebomb

theguardian.com:

A void avocado toast. Ditch the flat white. And turn your back on the lure of Instagrammable holidays. Over the past decade, millennials have been ordered to scrimp, save and toil to get on the property ladder. Cutting out small luxuries won’t have helped much in the pursuit of home ownership. But for those who managed to buy a home in recent years, there is a fresh insult.

In Britain’s exploding mortgage timebomb, young adults are paying the heaviest price – exposing yet again Britain’s widening generational gulf. As the Bank of England whacks up interest rates to save the nation from the highest inflation rates since the early 1980s, it is those who hadn’t even been born then who carry the heaviest burden for bringing it down.

According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the increase in monthly mortgage payments awaiting 20- to 40-year-olds will be about twice as large as the rise for those over the age of 60. For millions more who rent, the prospect of home ownership is drifting further from reach, as their (typically older) landlords either sell up, or inflate rents at the fastest rate on record.

As with each of the last three big economic shocks to hit Britain – from the 2008 financial crash to the Covid pandemic and cost of living crisis – the nation’s younger generations have been sold down the river, forced to endure stagnant wages, crumbling job opportunities, the rising cost of education, the dismantling of generous company pension schemes and housing penury. It is hardly any wonder that millennials – broadly defined as those aged 25 to 40 – believe the Tories deserve to lose the next election.

For all the headlines of the past fortnight about mortgage misery and financial pain, it’s worth remembering that a