A generation of young British adults is close to giving up hope of ever owning their own place to live. A startling new survey reveals that while the great majority of young Britons from “Generation Rent” would like to become homeowners, most believe they will be unable to raise the mortgage they require to get on to the property ladder.

A combination of continually rising house prices and pessimism about the future is threatening to send into reverse the explosion in home ownership stimulated by Margaret Thatcher 30 years ago, making Britain more like Europe, where living in rented property is the norm. The findings, issued by the Halifax, coincide with a separate report from the housing charity Shelter which reveals that the number of mortgages offered in April slumped to the lowest level since records began. Just 29,355 mortgages were granted, 18 per cent fewer than during the same month last year.

The online survey of 8,000 Britons aged 20 to 45 by the polling company Populus, which the Halifax drew on, found that more than three-quarters who do not own property would like to, but 64 per cent believe that their prospects of ever buying their own home are nil. The survey also found that 84 per cent of first-time buyers were put off by a belief that the banks do not want to lend to them and would find excuses to say no, while 67 per cent thought there was little point in applying at all because of the probability that they would be turned down.

Campbell Robb, chief executive of Shelter, said: “It used to be the accepted path that you grew up, moved out of the family home and started a life of your own.

“Our research shows a fundamental shift in society, with young people today unable to make the same life choices as their parents and being robbed of the opportunity to lead full and independent lives.”

Alison Blackwell, the author of a report by the National Centre for Social Research based on the survey, said: “The phenomenon of ‘Generation Rent’ could have major socio-economic implications. It would mean fewer homeowners being able to buy and therefore fund the construction of the new homes required in the UK to meet demand, resulting in a slowing down in the housing market.”

She added: “It could open up a widening of the wealth gap that already exists between homeowners and non-homeowners. And people in ‘Generation Rent’ risk insufficient finances at retirement.”

But a separate report published yesterday by the Institute for Public Policy Research think-tank warned of the risks involved in allowing a mortgage free-for-all. The report argues that one of the reasons house prices are so high is that it is too easy for buyers to raise mortgages they can barely afford.

They suggest that the Government should introduce rules to restrict the size of a mortgage to 90 per cent of the price of a property, and three-and-a-half times the household’s annual income. They argue that this would prevent another housing bubble.

The IPPR plan would require first-time buyers to save up thousands of pounds towards a deposit on their first home, as young couples were forced to do a generation ago – but the Halifax survey suggests that they are unlikely to do it, because they do not think the banks or building societies will lend to them anyway.

“Britain has suffered four housing bubbles in the past 40 years, each of which contributed to major economic and social problems,” said the IPPR’s director, Nick Pearce.

“We must learn the lessons from this economic history. A central plank of economic policy should be to target moderate increases in house prices, rather than to allow runaway house-price inflation, which is always damaging in the long run.”

Emphasis on fun. No big surprise here; however, what is very, very significant with this trend is reflected in home design trends. One of the best ways to have more fun with your second home is to reduce the hassles. And how do you do this? ‘Small’ is the easiest way. I am seeing more and more second homeowners who want to do their own yard work and house cleaning.

Yes, they are sick and tired of the expenses that go along with house cleaners, gardeners and the like. They tell me they enjoy doing the work around a small home. How small? I live in Sunbeam Estates (across the street from the Breckenridge Ice Rink). The average number of bedrooms in the neighborhood is five (the largest has twelve). The newest home in the neighborhood is in the planning approval process right now and it has just one bedroom.

Don’t get the wrong idea. I am not suggesting we will see a glut of one-bedroom homes. I am simply making the point that homes are getting smaller. For more info, review studies conducted by The American Institute of Architects.

If you are in Summit County just for the holiday, know that you can read the rest of the trends online. It is easy; each week go to www.summitdaily.com and search for “market insights” to learn more.

There are all kinds of avenues available to those that are considering real estate as a likely method of investing in the future. And why on earth shouldn’t you? This is one way that millionaires around the world will agree to build a massive fortune quickly. At the same time, real estate can be a very risky venture for business so you need to have a few more stable methods of bringing in money in order to have a truly diverse portfolio and a better security system for your financial future. Even within the world of real estate investment you will find different manners of investing that each bear different risks.

Commercial real estate is a good place to begin because it is relatively secure when compared to some of the other forms of real estate investing. The drawback with commercial real estate is that it requires a massive investment to begin with. This is something that many real estate investors do not even consider until they have built a sizable portfolio and have plenty of money to risk. It is stable because most businesses that lease from you will want to lease on a long-term basis. This means that when you get clients, businesses prefer to stay in one location as long as possible because it’s bad for business in most cases to constantly be on the move, they tend to stay a while.

House flipping. This is becoming a popular form of real estate investing and many people have discovered that this is also a great way to make or spend money very quickly. This is a high-risk venture to say the least but the rewards are equally high when a flip goes well. You will have to decide for yourself if you are willing to take the gamble as house flips are part skill and part luck.

Residential rental properties. Becoming a landlord, while perhaps not as glitzy as owning business properties throughout the city or flipping fabulous properties for instant profits is a great way to work yourself into a rather comfortable retirement. This is a long-term type of real estate investment but the payoffs can be rewarding when all is said and done. For the cautious real estate investor this is a worthy type of real estate investment to pursue.

Pre-construction real estate. Pre-Construction profits are even riskier than house flipping in many instances, particularly as it has become so popular in recent years. The trick with this kind of investment is finding the right property in the right market. If you can get in a city that is about to have a serious housing shortage or is in the beginning stages of a housing shortage (such as a few desert and coastal communities have experienced in recent years) you stand to make quite a fortune for yourself. The problem is that this field is highly speculative and very competitive.

Lease or rent to own purchases can often bring better profits. For many real estate owners this is preferable to straight up renting for many reasons. First of all, those who hope to own their homes are much more likely to take better care of their homes than those who are just renting. This means that even if for some reason they decide to move elsewhere and do not complete the purchase you are less likely to need extensive repairs before you can move along to the next client. You can charge a little more than rent applying a certain amount of the monthly rent to the purchase price or down payment of the home, and you can actually be helping a family that might have hit a trouble spot along the way to achieve the American dream of home ownership.

Real estate investing is a great way to build great fortunes. You must decide where you want to begin your journey into this lucrative field however. Remember that once you’ve begun your real estate investment career it is a good idea to utilize more than one type of investment for the sake of diversity and spreading the risks, as this is a volatile market at best.

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They’re drinking chai lattes at the Pogo Café, a “space for alternative culture” run by volunteers in Hackney. At the till, a man in dreadlocks is telling anyone who will listen how he “struggles with his veganism as a practical thing”. Youths with Shoreditch haircuts lounge on second-hand sofas, hooked to their Apple Macs. On the right, a bookshelf is lined with titles such as “Openly Classist”, “Wilful Disobedience”, “Bash the Rich”, and, my favourite, “La Dolce Vegan!”. On the left, a board is covered with notices. “Squat urgently needed, little English spoken,” reads one. Another: “Female vegan sought.” This is squatter heartland, where a new generation of rent refuseniks comes to meet and offer each other support.

Before I arrive, I read an astonishing statistic: there are 700,000 empty
houses in Britain today. The highest proportion is in the urban north-west,
where whole streets stand unoccupied. But walk down any street and you’ll
find one; the telltale signs – dusty, drawn curtains, letter boxes jammed
full of post, chipboard windows – can be seen in every town and city in the
country.

Here in east London, a few doors down from the Pogo, an estate-agent’s window
offers an indication as to why a growing number of young people are turning
to squatting. A two-bed flat is 475 a week; a one-bed period conversion,
325. It’s not a lot less than the median weekly wage last year: 499. But
Cat Brogan, 26, pays nothing. She has been squatting for more than three
years, and last November gave up her day job. Now she is a full-time poet,
supporting herself on poetry readings and school workshops.

“I didn’t want to be a wage slave,” she says, over a cappuccino. “But
it took me a long time to accept that art and poetry were worth putting my
time into. I don’t think that life is about getting on to a career path and
sticking in the same job for 15 years.” Originally from Omagh in
Northern Ireland, Brogan graduated in politics and English at York
University in 2006 before moving to London to work for a fair-trade
organisation. Her reasons for squatting are economical, but also
philosophical: she believes the proliferation of empty buildings is not only
inflating London’s rental market – fewer homes means more demand for those
that are available – but also an affront to communities struggling to house
the poor. “People leave properties empty because to them it’s money in
the bank. But just think how a community could use that space.”

In her previous squat, she staged poetry readings, and she describes all the
squats she has been in as safe and friendly environments. She blames the
media for misrepresenting the squatting community as made up of drug addicts
and layabouts. “Most squatters have jobs,” she says. “Personally,
I’m not interested in drugs. I’m already quite happy in myself so I don’t
need them, and I’m also very tight with money. Again, within any circle of
people, there will be some who have a drug addiction, as a way of coping,
but I don’t think the proportion is any higher among squatters – how many
bankers have coke habits? How many doctors are alcoholics? It’s no different.”

Much like Morris dancing, bell-ringing or going to Ikea, squatting is a minor
British institution we’ve learnt to live with. In fact, it might almost be
proclaimed an ancient right: some say it all began with the Peasants’ Revolt
of 1381, though most point to 1649, a year of political unrest, when Gerrard
Winstanley founded the True Levellers or Diggers, a group of peasants who
occupied common land, claiming it as their rightful due. Squatting
blossomed, out of necessity, during the Second World War, and grew again in
the hippy days of the 1960s. In Scotland, it has been illegal since 1860,
but in England and Wales, the law is a twilight zone of confusion.

The Advisory Service for Squatters estimates there to be 15,000 to 17,000
people currently squatting in the UK, though no official figures exist. The
rise of this new wave has been likened to the 1970s, when anti-establishment
groups saw it as a solution to the housing crisis; in 1979, there were an
estimated 50,000 squatters in Britain, of whom 30,000 were in the capital.

These days, the tabloids delight in reporting stories of youths occupying
multimillion-pound mansions in central London, blaming the vagaries of the
law for allowing them to stay for weeks. Most prominent has been the Really
Free School, a community of artists and students who have capitalised on the
proliferation of empty buildings to host a scheme of free education – their
name lightly mocks the Conservatives’ plans for free schools.

More worryingly, stories have emerged of individuals returning home from
holiday to find their home invaded by squatters, apparently powerless to
kick them out. This prompted the Justice Secretary Ken Clarke, to call for a
tightening of the law, to make the activity illegal.

It is not the first time the Conservatives have acted in this way. First in
the 1970s and latterly under John Major in the 1990s, they tried, though
failed, to make it a criminal activity. Squatting is currently a civil
offence, which places it on a par with speeding or forcing someone into a
marriage – not deemed offences against society, but a dispute between two
individuals. Breaking and entering a property is a crime, but if you happen
to try a door, and it happens to open, no crime has been committed.

For the property owner, this means squatters can be an expensive headache, but
making criminals of them would be a step too far, believes John McDonnell,
Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington. Earlier this month, he launched Squash,
a campaign to oppose Clarke’s plans, along with Paul Palmer, an
empty-property consultant. “Squatters tend to occupy long-term empties
often owned by absentee property speculators registered in offshore tax
havens,” says Palmer. “To criminalise squatting would protect only
one set of people: the greedy and the powerful who can afford to keep
property empty.”

The protagonists in these stories are often portrayed by each side either as
heartless developers or crack addicts. The truth is, naturally, far more
nuanced. “Just as some journalists tap people’s phones, some squatters
give the rest a bad reputation,” says Brogan. “In general,
squatters don’t have an interest in smashing up a property, because they’re
going to live there. The people who smash up properties are the owners, who
don’t want it to be squatted.”

Even the best-intentioned can, however, cause distress to home owners. Peter
Nahum is a 61-year-old art dealer, and a former presenter on the BBC’s
Antiques Roadshow. Last summer he bought a Georgian townhouse on Bloomsbury
Square in central London, which had been an office for years. He and his
wife hoped to convert it back to a private home, and had just begun building
work when they discovered it had been occupied by the Really Free School.
Unlike the film director Guy Ritchie, who also had a house occupied by the
group, Nahum had bought the house to be his sole home, after years of
renting. It’s ironic that, like Brogan and many other squatters, he too was
trying to escape London’s punishing rental market.

“They said they wanted to negotiate with us,” he laughs when we
meet, recalling the day he found the squatters. “I said the only
negotiation was, please could they get out of my house.” The law states
that, after finding squatters, the owner has four weeks to take out a court
order to make them leave, at a cost of 3,000. “Which is fine if
you’re a big property company,” says Nahum, “Or you can take the
slow route, which is much cheaper, but it could take three or four months.”
He spent two weeks getting to know the squatters over coffee, and his
negotiations eventually paid off. “Unlike my wife, who started roundly
abusing them,I decided they were well-meaning kids, and I’d treat them with
respect. I said, ‘You can either cost me 3,000 and get out, or you can just
get out; either way you’re going to be out in three weeks,’ so they agreed
to get out. I also said the panelling dated from 1740, please don’t graffiti
over it. But they were a free school. They had already painted a blackboard.”

Nahum speaks fondly of the “essentially middle-class kids” with whom
he is still in touch, but he dismisses their ideologies as half-baked. “I
spent my life working and saving to reach a moment where I could buy this
house. Then they come in and write slogans on the wall like ‘Unemployment
for all (not just the rich)’.”

Somewhere between Nahum and the Really Free School lies a compromise. There is
a housing shortage, and there are empty homes. And this is where Camelot
comes in. Camelot is an agency specialising in vacant-property management;
it brings together owners of empty buildings and people seeking cheap
housing, and forges a mutually beneficial union. It carefully selects
tenants, often choosing key workers. For it’s not just artists who squat.

Jada, a 24-year-old decorator and construction labourer, was sleeping on the
floor of his mother’s flat when some friends invited him to join their
squat, a disused bowling clubhouse in Balham, two years ago. “At first,
we wondered why the owners hadn’t tried to evict us,” he says. “They
bought this plot to develop; it’s worth a fortune, and they wanted to build
flats on the bowling green.”

Since moving in, Jada and his friends have carried out extensive improvements,
clearing chimneys, fixing the roof and keeping it warm and dry. In fact,
they have been ideal tenants, at least as far as the neighbours are
concerned. “It turns out that the owners let us stay because they
thought having squatters here would anger the neighbours,” says Jada. “They
thought the neighbours would rather have the flats than squatters. But they
were wrong – the neighbours all overlook the bowling green, so they rejected
all the applications to build flats. They would much rather have us here
instead.”

The make-it-work squatter

Hannele Hiltunen, 26

Originally from Finland, Hiltunen has been squatting in Balham Bowling
Green Clubhouse since graduating from Roehampton University in 2009

“I moved into the clubhouse in July 2009, so I’ve been there nearly two
years. I live with Jada, who’s a building-site labourer; Richard, who’s a
carpenter; and Emma, an independent film-maker. I’m kind of enjoying the
free life. My main activity is squatting – it takes up a surprising amount
of time – but I am looking for work.

“We have no electricity and when our water was cut off in October, it
raised a lot of concern as to how we could deal with the situation. We
discovered we could collect rainwater from the roof to wash in and buy
bottled for drinking and cooking. The fireplace only warms up so much of the
room, which makes sleeping very difficult. The neighbours are quite
friendly; the guy who lives on the corner here used to be a squatter
himself.

“I’m very happy here. I plan to stay indefinitely. But with squatting
there is always a chance of getting evicted. I understand that a successful
planning application takes eight weeks to clear, so you still have two
months to move. I think they are putting in another application this year,
so this could be our last summer.”

The owner

Peter Nahum, 61

An art dealer, Nahum bought a townhouse in Bloomsbury last summer, which he
is still renovating. It was occupied by the Really Free School for three
weeks in January

“We were lucky with the squatters we got. They were essentially nice,
middle-class kids, who would go and wash at friends’ flats nearby. But they
were completely insensitive to anybody else’s time, values or problems.

“They cost me a lot of money, and I had to spend three weeks having
coffee with them, persuading them to leave. Luckily I had the time to do it.
And they do do quite interesting things. But why have a free school in
central London? Why not go to the poorer districts if you want to educate
people?

“Their claims that they’re doing it as property prices are too high is
nonsense. They wouldn’t be able to afford a property even if it was 57p.
They squat because it’s fun.

“One of their proverbs on the walls said, ‘Unemployment for all (not just
the rich)’. Well, if nobody did any work, who would support them? These
people live off a system. If there wasn’t a system, what would they live
off? They’d have to get their hands dirty like everybody else. Just as I did
for 40 years, which enabled me to save the money to buy an incredibly
beautiful house.”

The artist squatter

Catherine Brogan, 26

A poet originally from Omagh, Northern Ireland, Brogan has squatted in
London for more than three years

“Squatting is the perfect example of the Big Society. It’s about people
taking matters into their own hands, looking after their own, and getting
together in groups and putting on events that are of benefit to the whole
community. They’re not relying on the state to survive. In fact, they’re
saving the Government money by not signing on and claiming housing benefit.

“People leave properties empty because to them it’s money in the bank.
It’s why rents are so high in London. Think how hard it is to get a flat.
The demand is so great that you have to just take whatever you can get.
Empty properties drive up the prices for everybody else.

“Squatting can help regenerate an area. Look at Dalston [in east London]:
it used to be the dodgiest place and nobody would want to live there. Then
people started squatting and it became cool. The same happened with
Shoreditch.

“If people aren’t living in an empty building, it’s more likely to be
vandalised. Whereas if you have squatters in, they’re likely to secure it. A
lot of squatters work. They have their own lives but just want to live
somewhere, they just need a house.”

The invited squatter

Charlie Billingham, 26

A Royal Academy student, Billingham lived in a privately rented office in
Walthamstow at a knock-down rate for two years, before moving out in 2010

“A group of businessmen had taken out a long lease on this office
building but weren’t using it, so they advertised it on Gumtree at a
knock-down rate. We were on the second floor above a gym and a college.

“Our presence was a benefit for them, as they’d had squatter problems
before. It ended up being cheaper than renting a flat or house, but we had
the space, and didn’t have to pay council tax, electricity or gas bills.

“The council aren’t very happy about people living in non-residential
spaces, partly because of the council tax, and also they worry about fire
safety. If the fire brigade don’t think there’s anyone sleeping there, it’s
classed as a different kind of risk. It’s not that we were opposed to paying
council tax, we just weren’t asked to.

“There was an art studio at the end and quite a lot of people worked in
theatre, and used the main room as a rehearsal space. We built a cinema by
painting a screen, putting in a projector and a curtain. Then we got pallets
and made tiers with sofas up towards the back.

“It was a lot of fun, there was a lot of space, and we had some big
parties.”

The protest squatter

Kate Connelly, 21

A student and prominent campaigner at the University of Glasgow, Connelly
is one of several activists who have occupied the recently closed
Hetherington Research Club for 100 days, in protest against the education
cuts being imposed by the Government. She has been arrested twice and
charged with one count of obstruction

“The Hetherington Research postgraduate club was closed down a year ago
by management. The postgrads haven’t really had a space on campus since and
we’re trying to have this space restored as their union.

“Now it’s an educational space where you can get informed about the cuts.
We’ve had a couple of great lecturers come down, we’ve had yoga workshops,
life-drawing classes, arts workshops, we’ve been showing films for children
every Sunday afternoon.

“The police and university tried to evict us on the 50th day. I was
pushed down a fire escape and sustained a concussion, so when I was
arrested, I had to go to hospital. We now have an email sent by management
the day after the botched eviction, saying that they’re permitting us to
stay here, ‘pending negotiations’.

“[Scotland's First Minister] Alex Salmond has openly condemned the way
the university is dealing with the protests.”

The revolutionary squatter

Belkhasem Alghiryani, 35

Since 9 March, Alghiryani and his group of Libyan exiles have occupied Saif
Gaddafi’s house in Hampstead Garden Suburb in north London, claiming
squatters’ rights in the name of the Libyan revolution

“We are here not for personal gain. I’ve got my own flat and I pay my
rent, as do all the guys. We are Libyan and we did it to show our people and
the world what Saif Gaddafi did with our money. He’s always saying, ‘I don’t
have anything, I’m a normal person like you, I’m a nomad,’ but he has houses
all over the place. This house is worth 11m; it could build four or five
schools in Libya, at least one big hospital, which they don’t have.

“When Gaddafi falls and the Libyan people can vote for a government they
are satisfied with, we will hand this house over. But the new government
cannot just run away with it, because we know they have a house here and
we’ll keep asking what they did with it.

“The police have visited us twice and realise we are not here to do any
damage. We have to keep 24-hour security, as Saif might have connections
here. We saw a Range Rover with a Libyan number plate. And a man came to the
door offering us 40,000 to leave. I asked him questions in Libyan, but he
replied in English.”

Interviews By George Binning Matthew Bell

Home values are down 30 percent from their peak could drop another 7 to 9 percent this year. Despite these statistics property taxes continue to increase. Take action to get your home’s property lowered in five easy steps:

[In Pictures: 10 Smart Ways to Improve Your Budget.]

Know the property tax process

When it comes to property assessments, every city is different. Make a stop at your local assessor’s office. Find out how they go about assessing properties, what forms you need to file and when the deadlines are for filing that appeal. You typically have 60 days or less from the time your annual assessment was mailed to lodge your appeal.

Pick up a property card

While at the assessor’s office, get a copy of your property card. This contains all the info the assessor used in determining your home’s assessed value: home’s square footage, the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, and features such as a garage or finished basement.

Know the neighborhood

We’re talking comps here. You need to know what comparable homes have recently sold for, and compare your home in terms of size, location, amenities and more. This is where Zillow comes in handy. Find at least three to five properties that are comparable to yours, and if you discover that yours is valued at least 5 to 10 percent higher, you likely have a case.

[See the best personal finance stories from around the Web at the U.S. News My Money blog.]

Make your case

If you have evidence that your home is over assessed, and the National Taxpayers Union estimates that as many as 60 percent of properties are, ask that it be re-assessed. Are there mistakes on your property card? For example, are there math errors? Is your home classified as “commercial”; even though it’s “residential”? Mistakes as these are common (the inaccuracy rates on these cards are between 30 and 50 percent, according to the NTU). They can be corrected on the spot and you can avoid a formal hearing altogether.

File your appeal

Is it more than a simple math mistake? Do you think you have a legitimate case? File an appeal. While the rules for appeals vary from place to place, most appeals are submitted in written form to county boards with a statement explaining why you feel the evaluation is inaccurate. Support this claim with evidence (property cards and photos can be useful if comparing the condition of your home to others), and succinctly make your case, with your eye on the prize: One in three challenges results in a tax reduction and the average tax savings is $200 to $5,000 a year, according to the NTU.

Vera Gibbons is a guest real estate contributor to the Zillow Blog, a resource for real estate and mortgage news. Twitter: @zillow.