A historically unprecedented rise in renting?

According to the Guardian this morning, Britain's recovery is one in which earners struggle and owners prosper. With income per head worse than it was six years ago, soaring house prices and a "historically unprecedented rise in renting".

We looked in detail last week at how much the recession cost households, finding that while disposable incomes (take home pay) have fallen overall since the recession, this hasn't been a consistent trend year-on-year.

What has been more consistent are rising house prices. There's a marginally different picture depending on which measure you look at, but the Office for National Statistics' own index - based on a sample of properties - does show prices rising almost consistently since 2012.

We've also looked at the long-term fall in home ownership. The Guardian's 'historically unprecedented rise' can be understood in context: the proportion of households privately renting has been rising fairly consistently since the 1990s, at the expense of social renters and homeowners.

There's no recorded rise in private renting of this scale previously, although we used to be a nation of renters. Back in 1918, 76% of households in England and Wales privately rented with 23% owning their own home, and 1% renting socially. Now the stats are almost reversed: 65% of households own their own home with 18% privately renting.