According to new research from Legal & General and reported in the Daily Mail, the Bank of Mum and Dad now helps 9% of renters across the UK with their financial commitments to their landlords on around 460,000 properties.
This equates to an average of £415 for each rental payment.
The study - conducted with the Centre for Economics & Business Research - highlighted how parents’ payments to the rental sector this year:
- are highest in London at £626million;
- are £604million in the South East;
- equate to £369million in Yorkshire and the Humber;
- are worth £175million in the North West.
Parents also helped with other rental costs, such as moving expenses and letting agent fees.
A spokesman from Legal & General said they have been tracking the role of the Bank of Mum and Dad for some years now “but this is the first time we’ve looked at its role in the rental market and the results are concerning.
“It is a real challenge for young people who are reliant on parental hand-outs just to make the rent.”
He added that the rental sector was experiencing a ‘crisis’ in supply, and blamed the lack of affordable housing, low wage growth relative to inflation, and burdens of student debt.
He summarised: “Parents want to help their kids get on in life, and the Bank of Mum and Dad is a testament to their generosity, but it is also a symptom of our broken housing market”.
Their numbers come as official figures from the English Housing Survey reveals that home ownership has fallen to a 30-year low, with just 62% of the adult population now owning their own home – the lowest proportion since 1985.
The total number of privately renting households has swollen by around a million since 2010, to hit a post-1980 high of 4.5million.
