Young Scots are rightly furious at a housing emergency that proves the system is against them
Access to family wealth - and not what you do for a living - has quickly become the single biggest determining factor of whether you can afford to buy a home, or whether you are left taking your chances with an overheating rental market.
In 1974, the average cost of a home in the UK was £10,027. Last year, the figure stood at £265,012 - an increase of £254,985. Needless to say, average wages have not kept pace. If house prices had risen only in line with salaries they would be £76,000 - or 29 per cent cheaper than they are.
There was a "modest improvement' in affordability across Britain last year as wage rises outpaced house price growth and mortgage costs fell slightly. But first-time buyers still typically pay about five times their earnings for a home.
This isn't because younger generations have become more picky about where they live. Few first-time buyers would have any expectation they could afford to live in central Edinburgh, for example. The capital has long been viewed as a mini-London in property terms, but the shortage of affordable homes in the city is now at crisis levels.
There are more children stuck living in temporary accommodation in Edinburgh than in the entirety of Wales. Local councillors pay lip service to this scandalous state of affairs, but they know they are effectively powerless to intervene.
The number of expensive hotels, private student accommodation developments and short-term rentals have exploded over the last 20 years. Social housing struggles to get a look-in. The knock-on effect is areas like West Lothian, west Fife and increasingly Falkirk have become dormitories for the capital's workforce, massively inflating local housing costs in the process.
In Glasgow, with its booming university sector and associated tech industries, the private rental market has exploded since 2010. The cost of renting a two-bed flat jumped by 22 per cent in 2022 alone. Parts of the city's west end and southside are now as every bit as expensive as Edinburgh.
Scotland's biggest cities are where the majority of well-paid jobs are. People are drawn to them because of economic reality, not for their trendy coffee shops. Some 70 per cent of Scots live along the M8 corridor across the central belt.
There may be multiple new housing developments alongside the motorway, but supply is still failing to meet demand. And where the market fails, the Government usually intervenes.
So why hasn't Holyrood done more? The short is answer is money, or a lack of it. The SNP Government was ahead of the game in ending the disastrous right-to-buy scheme, which decimated social housing stocks across the UK. But Scotland desperately needs more affordable homes built. We can't make do with the existing stock.
It's a crisis that can't be ignored. Housing deserves to be a key issue at next year's Holyrood election campaign.
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