How the housing crisis is killing romance
Young couples are increasingly finding buying a house a bigger barrier to adulthood than getting married, says Emma Revell
As bank holiday weekends ago, spending one in the gorgeous late August sun celebrating the wedding of two close friends is definitely up there.
Weddings, along with buying a home and becoming a parent, are one of the biggest milestones that make a person feel like a proper adult. But for millennials and those even younger, the housing crisis is increasingly dictating the order in which they can be achieved.
The happy couple I spent the bank holiday celebrating have lived together for five years and currently share a flat with a roommate. Not necessarily the vision of newlywed bliss some might picture, but a totally unremarkable situation for millennials in 2025, especially in and around the South East.
The subject of marriage vs house buying also came up in conversation with a colleague last week. Catching up after a few days of annual leave following his own wedding, he happened to mention that buying a house with his new wife felt much more difficult and a bigger challenge than planning a wedding.
One of the biggest questions with the wedding planning, he said, had been working out what to put on the gift registry. Because it’s not a resurgence of puritanical beliefs that is making young couples put their weddings ahead of house buying on the milestone checklist. They are living together, often for several years, before tying the knot so they don’t need a kettle or a butter dish. But they are doing so as renters, not homeowners, because the idea of getting on the housing ladder in our majority cities is so unattainable. Instead of the John Lewis wishlist, a cash gift towards a deposit therefore isn’t unheard of.
A baby in a one-bed
For young couples, many of whom may want to start families, it’s a difficult decision whether to wait for the security and stability of having a foot on the housing ladder while weighing up the pros and cons of having a baby in a one-bed in Zone 3 instead of waiting, perhaps for years. It’s even more of a dilemma if you think you might want more than one child.
It’s well known that the average age of a first-time buyer has been tracking upwards – figures from 2023 put it at 32 in England, 35 if you look just at London.
It is patently common sense to say that buying a home is easier if there’s two of you. In 2023-24, only 26 per cent of first-time buyers were one person households, compared to 68 per cent where couples were involved.
A cash gift towards a deposit is not an uncommon wedding gift
But of that 68 per cent, only 21 per cent already had dependent children. The other 48 per cent may or may not wish to ever have children, but it seems fair to assert that at least a significant fraction of them chose option B outlined above – couples who wanted the security of homeownership before thinking about starting a family.
It’s no wonder then, that figures for 2023 found that the average age of mothers was approaching 31, with fathers slightly older. It’s not out of whack with the age of becoming a homeowner, but one is much easier – practically speaking – to achieve. Flash back 50 years and their grandparents were starting families much earlier, at 26 for mothers and 29 for fathers.
In 2023, the fertility rate in England and Wales dropped to a record low. The housing crisis is making it more difficult than ever to afford children and the consequences of a falling birth rate – aside from the impact on individual families that aren’t able to have the number of children they would like – will filter through into the affordability of public services for decades to come.
What is so frustrating about this is we know exactly how to fix it. Yes, the falling birth rate is due to a combination of other factors as well, but Britain has just 446 homes per 1,000 people. When set against our comparable European neighbours, we have a shortfall of 6.5m homes. If we were able to plug just some of that gap it would unlock significant flexibility in the labour market, increase choice and security for renters, and maybe give newlyweds a chance to cross their very own threshold.
Emma Revell is external affairs director at the Centre for Policy Studies