Homeowners are not the only ones hurt by the mortgage mess
It’s painful being a homeowner with a remortgaging deadline approaching. But perhaps not as painful as being a tenant.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics last month showed that while 45 per cent of the bill-paying population found energy hard to afford and 30 per cent of those with rent or mortgages found payments tricky, the picture was about 15 percentage points worse among renters than indebted homeowners.
That’s not entirely surprising. Renters’ personal finances are more strained than their owner-occupier counterparts. They spend more of their income on rent than homeowners do on mortgages — around a third of average earnings. In London, official data marks rent as unaffordable for everyone but those on higher incomes. The only English regions where it is affordable for those on lower incomes are the East Midlands and the North West.
This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Cat Rutter Pooley
