Young people can’t afford to buy their own home – but it’s nothing to do with Netflix

Recent opinion polling tells us that an awful lot of Britons simply don’t understand the economics of housing, writes Hannah Fearn

The average deposit in the UK is now more than £57,000 – £74,000 (PA)

Why can’t you buy a house? Half of baby boomers apparently believe the “luxury” lifestyle of millennials is trapping them in shared housing and extortionate private rents, according to researchers at Kings College London.

Lattes in the morning, paying for a mobile phone (hardly a luxurious life choice), Netflix subscriptions and foreign holidays are all blamed for preventing young people saving enough to put down a deposit for their first home. Happily, this time avocados went unmentioned.

Before you burst an artery, the Intergenerational Foundation has crunched the numbers to put a stop to this irrational thinking: the average deposit in the UK is now more than £57,000 – £74,000 if you’re buying alone – and reaching £130,000 for properties in London. Netflix costs £6.99 a month. It would take 700 years of saving that sub to raise a deposit.