British are not as obsessed with home ownership as once thought

摘要

Why are the British so obsessed with home ownership? The short answer is that we are not quite as obsessed as we sometimes think. At 67%, the home ownership rate in the UK is less than that of Norway (85%), Spain (79%), Italy (74%), Belgium (72%) and Sweden (70%). That said, the UK is conspicuously ahead of such rich countries as Switzerland and Germany, where the rates respectively are 44% and 53%. Yet housing does play an unusually important part in the British psyche. Part of the reason lies in history. Over the past 60 years, housing has been a great investment. Despite serious downturns when measured in real terms in the mid-1970s, the early 1980s, the early 1990s and - rather more modestly -after 2007, prices have risen strongly over time.