More than half (54pc) of Britons questioned in a poll commissioned by Grainger, the UK’s largest listed residential landlord, expect that in 15 years more people in the UK will be renting their homes than owning.

The split today is around 30pc rented and 70pc ownership. With social renting expected to stay fairly stable at 16pc, the survey implies that private renters – currently representing 17pc of the market – will double by 2016, said Grainger.

“There is a new housing reality dawning on Britain: the financial crisis has tightened mortgage lending; house prices continue to be uncertain; and, frankly there are simply too few homes for the demand,” said Nick Jopling, the company’s executive property director. “More and more people are renting.”

The survey found that 40pc of people now see renting as a first step on to the housing ladder. In addition, 92pc of young people polled (18 to 34-year-olds) said they saw renting as the only way they can move out from their parents’ homes.

The younger generation was also less likely to say that owning a house was an important today as it was 25 years ago. Grainger saw this as evidence that the “stigma” of renting is dissipating over the generations.

The company wants the Government to speed up the process of unlocking land for new developments, to implement their controversial proposals to reform the planning system and to back the private rented sector as an acceptable form of housing tenure.

“The shortage of housing is set to continue – more needs to be done to avoid the growing crisis and close the gap between supply and demand,” said Mr Jopling.

Shelter, the homeless charity, warned that the shortage of housing already means that private rents are now “sky-high”.

“As well as this, almost half the properties in the sector are in poor and substandard condition which people have no other choice than to accept,” said Campbell Robb, chief executive of Shelter.

“This raises some very serious questions about how we create a decent stable private rented sector that meets the needs of the 1m families with children currently living there. We urge the Government to address this in their upcoming housing strategy.”

The survey polled more than 2,200 people.

Report by By Emma Rowley – The Telegraph

Europe’s two richest countries, France and Germany, have cast their weight behind their poorest peer, Greece, saying they do not intend to push the near-bankrupt nation out of the euro fold. Neither, they say, do they have a new proposal or plan to keep Greece’s running debt crisis from spiral out of control.

But on Wednesday French President Nikolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel took a huge leap of faith by telling their embattled Greek counterpart George Papandreou that they expect him deliver on pledges to reboot the Greek economy.

It’s not the first reprimand Mr. Papandreou has faced in recent months, but it will probably be the last.

The threat, including an imminent cut-off of multi-billion loan funds from international lenders, has set fire to dragging Greek feet. Finance ministry officials are now scrambling to push through delayed reforms and make up for more than €2-billion in shortfalls recorded in the 2011 budget alone. “We have to rally together once more in a national effort,” Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said earlier this week.

That may prove tricky.

With recession biting deeper into the Greek economy and unemployment soaring — it’s expected to climb to 20 per cent by 2012 — austerity-hit Greeks are balking at added belt-tightening measures like never before.

On Friday, civil groups said they were mounting class-action suits to block a new property tax announced by the government this week in a desperate bid to close the €2-billion budget shortfall. A string of social networking sites and blogs have sprung up in recent days, rallying Greeks not to pay the new tax.

Seven in 10 Greeks already face difficulty paying a rash of tax hikes imposed by the socialist government in the last two years, according to opinion polls published earlier this month.

The new tariff aims to target high-earners. Still, it exempts monasteries, places of worship and charity funds run by the wealthy Greek Church while leaving none of the country’s five million homeowners untouched — not even the handicapped and unemployed, who are traditionally shielded by the state with special exceptions.

Enraging Greeks further are government threats to plunge homeowners into darkness if they fail to pay the tax, which will be charged through landlords’ electricity bills.

“It’s blackmail,” huffed Nikos Fotopoulos, the leader of the country’s most powerful union. “We will not allow the public power corporation to become a means of tax collection for any government.”

The measure signals what analysts are calling a complete collapse and humiliating failure of the country’s ailing tax collection system. It also mirrors the government’s repeated refusal to pursue radical spending cuts in the bloated public sector, a move that would upend decades of cozy ties between the ruling party and its core constituency.

“They are killing the private sector,” says former finance minister Stefanos Manos, who now leads a political action group. “The government should quit and Greece’s international lenders should spurn such disgraceful moves [ the tax levy].”

Perhaps. But until then, Mr. Papandreou — and Greeks altogether — have been given one last chance to stay in the euro.

Report by anthee carassava ATHENS – The Globe and Mail

France has scrapped plans for a new tax that would have cost British holiday home owners thousands of pounds a year.

The U-turn came after intense pressure on President Nicolas Sarkozy from senior politicians representing expatriates who own properties in France.

The tax had been aimed at foreigners with second homes that remain unoccupied for most of the year.

It would have affected around 360,000 homes – more than half of which are believed to be owned by Britons.

Owners would have been charged a tax of 20 per cent of the annual rent that could have been gained from the property.

A four-bedroomed house on the French Riviera could have represented a tax of more than 1,500 pounds a year.

The decision to abandon the charge came after a meeting between President Sarkozy and budget minister Francois Baroin on Saturday.

Political observers said the fact that expatriate home owners will be able to vote for MPs from next year may have prompted the retreat.

Olivier Cadic, who represents the UK for the Council for French Abroad, said the tax would have unfairly punished British home-owners who have restored neglected properties and ‘brought vitality back to deserted rural villages’.

He said even if the tax had gone ahead, it could have fallen foul of EU law by discriminating between residents and non-residents.

He wrote on his blog: ‘It is contrary to the notion of equality that is written in to the French constitution – namely that this tax would create a special group who would be taxed.

‘I am very happy with the decision, which will be a huge relief to non-residents with a second home in France.

‘I think June 18 was a particularly good choice of date for the tax to have its Waterloo!’

Sarkozy won power in 2007 promising that taxes would not rise, but he is under pressure as the May 2012 election looms to fend off left-wing critics who say he has helped a wealthy minority.

Report by Ian Sparks – Daily Mail

UK house prices are set to be 16% higher by the end of 2015 following a four-year recovery in the market that will start late this year, an economics group has predicted.

Property values will continue to fall for much of 2011, ending the year around 1.4% lower than they started it, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR).

But the market will begin to stabilise towards the end of the year, when the UK’s property shortage will once again underpin prices.

Improvements to the major banks’ balance sheets should lead to them loosening their strict lending criteria, enabling more people to buy a home.

The previous upturn in the housing market was caused by a mismatch between supply and demand, but the recovery petered out as economic uncertainty caused potential buyers to sit on their hands, while those who wanted to press ahead with a purchase continued to face problems raising the mortgage finance they needed.

But CEBR said with just 130,000 new homes built in 2010, around half the level needed to keep pace with the growing number of households, prices should increase by 16% between 2011 and 2015, the equivalent of a gain of around 4% a year.

The recovery will be more marked in London with demand from international buyers set to push up the cost of housing in the capital by around 2% a year more than across the UK as a whole.

CEBR chief executive Douglas McWilliams said: “We still believe house prices will fall this year, although there are signs that prices will stabilise over the second half of the year.

“The main factor driving house prices up is the shortage of available housing which has already pushed up rents. Housing completions fell to only 130,000 in 2010, well below the level required to keep pace with demographic change.”

But consumer spending is likely to take longer to recover, with the group expecting it to fall by 0.8% in 2011, followed by relatively low average growth of 2% from 2012 to 2015.

The volume of food sales looks set to drop for the second consecutive year, falling by 0.1%, while clothing sales will increase by just 3.3%, one of the slowest growth rates in recent history.

The predictions come the day after property intelligence group Hometrack said house prices in England and Wales fell by 0.1% in May following a drop in the number of house hunters registering with estate agents.

The group expects the industry to lose 1% of its value during 2011 as a whole.

Report by Nicky Burridge – Belfast Telegraph