Housing swells to 60 per cent of UK’s net wealth
THE UK’S net worth has doubled in the past ten years, despite the impact of the financial crisis, as property prices pump up the total value of the country.
The UK’s non-financial assets were estimated to be worth £7.3 trillion last year, over 60 per cent of which is now made up of the country’s dwellings. The UK’s housing was worth around £4.4 trillion in 2012, according to yesterday’s report by the Office for National Statistics.
In the past 20 years, the UK’s other resources have more than doubled, but the price of housing in the UK has skyrocketed, nearly quadrupling between 1992 and 2012.
The proportion of the UK’s wealth made up by housing looks set to increase even further, with prices increasing by 3.1 per cent in the year to June, and 8.1 per cent in London alone over the same period, according to separate ONS data.
Though the impact of the crash and the onset of recession knocked the UK’s net worth down, from £6.64 trillion in 2007, to £6.28 trillion in 2009, by 2010 it had bounced back to nearly seven trillion pounds.