New data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) has estimated that the value of our homes continued to boom during the second year of the pandemic. But despite this increase, COVID-19 still saw people fall into fuel poverty, homelessness and poor quality homes. We take a look at who gains when the price of our homes increases, and how we could build a system that does a better job of bringing this value back to our pockets and communities.
Every year, the ONS measures the ‘wealth’ held by UK households, including their cash in savings, the value of any land and property they own, and their pensions, insurance and other investments. The latest data, released last month, estimated the total amount of wealth held by UK households to have grown by £900 billion in 2021, to £12.3 trillion (Figure 1).
Despite the ongoing pandemic, this was an increase of 7.6%, the largest annual growth in the record since 2016, and the second largest since at least 1996 (Figure 2). The ONS measurements also recorded significant wealth increases in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, estimating that household net wealth grew 7.0% (£0.57 trillion) to
— source positivemoney.org | Martha Dillon | 23 Feb 2023