LEVELS of home ownership among young adults on middle incomes have “collapsed” over the past 20 years, according to a study by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) published today.

Just one in four 25 to 34-year-olds has a chance of getting on the property ladder, compared with two in three in the mid-1990s, the think tank’s research found.

Decreasing rates of home ownership come as little surprise in the context of a long-running housing crisis.

The new IFS figures show that those earning around £30,000 are no more likely to own property than those paid considerably less.

Labour’s shadow housing minister John Healey called the report a “wake-up call” for ministers.

He said the government had “let down” first-time buyers, adding that it “promised to build 200,000 new cut-price ‘starter homes,’ but three years on not a single one has been built.”

Young adults today are much less likely to be home-owners than those born just five or 10 years earlier, the IFS report says.

The gap in ownership rates between those on middle incomes and those on high incomes has also increased sharply.

The report points out that house prices were 152 per cent higher in 2015-16 than they were 20 years earlier after inflation is factored in.

The real net family incomes of those aged 25-34 have increased by only 22 per cent over the same period.

The figures were published just days after Labour criticised the government’s flagship Help to Buy scheme, arguing that it provides very limited help to very few people while risking further increases in house prices.

Jeremy Corbyn’s party has promised half a million new council homes at social rents in addition to another half a million genuinely affordable homes in the first term of a Labour government.