Whilst the credit crunch may have pushed home ownership much further out of reach for a large section of the population, the number of owner occupiers has been steadily tailing off since 2006.
Halifax reported the largest annual fall in owner-occupiers on record in 2007, from 14.621 million to 14.538 million, with the continued decline in homeowners under the age of 34 having a profound impact on this figure.
This has been in part driven by a 2 per cent fall in the number of those buying a home with a mortgage, with those owning their property outright not increasing quickly enough to offset the decline.
Unsurprisingly landlords have plugged this hole and the number of people living in privately rented housing has subsequently grown.
Property prices in the North and South of the country are also having a marked effect on owner-occupation statistics.
Between 2001 and 2006, the number of homeowners in the North increased by 345,000 or 5.1 per cent, whilst those in the South were being pushed off the ladder causing the number to fall by 92,000 or 1.2 per cent.
At a local authority level, Castle Point in Essex has the highest owner-occupation rate in England with 88.5 per cent of all households being owner-occupiers. At the other end of the scale is Tower Hamlets in London where only 29 per cent of residents own their own home.
Doom and gloom aside people are still able to get their foot on the housing ladder, there are simply just more hurdles to overcome. Indeed, since 1918 the rate of owner-occupancy has increased by 46 per cent.
Historically, the sharpest rise in owner-occupation was during the 1980s as a result of the Thatcher government's Right to Buy scheme. The rate of owner-occupation increased from 57 per cent in 1981 to 68 per cent in 1991, hovering between 68 and 70 per cent since then.
To look at the bigger picture, Spain has the highest owner-occupation rate at 82 per cent compared to the UK's 70 per cent - along similar lines to Australia and Sweden.
