Opinion Piece: Wealth, Housing and the Growing Mortgage Divide

finances being calculated

Every year, the rich lists are published and every year the numbers become harder to comprehend.

The 2025 Sunday Times Rich List estimated that the 350 richest individuals and families in Britain collectively hold around £772.8 billion of wealth. The Hinduja family alone were estimated to be worth £35.3 billion, while the Reuben brothers and Sir Leonard Blavatnik were both estimated to be worth more than £25 billion each.

Britain remains home to well over one hundred billionaires.

For most people, £1 billion is an almost incomprehensible sum of money. So let’s put that into perspective.

Imagine a billionaire who has £1 billion sitting in an easy-access savings account earning a relatively modest 4% annual interest rate. They would generate £40 million per year in interest alone. That’s more than £3.3 million every month without lifting a finger, taking a risk, creating a product or employing a single member of staff.

They could be sitting at home in their slippers watching daytime television and still earn more in a month than many people will earn across multiple lifetimes.

The scale of wealth accumulation is becoming so extraordinary that economists and analysts have openly debated who might become the world’s first trillionaire. Elon Musk is frequently cited as the most likely candidate if current trends continue. Whether that prediction ultimately comes true is beside the point. The fact that the conversation is even taking place tells us something about the unprecedented concentration of wealth occurring in the modern economy.

The obvious question is: what do you do with money on that scale?

The traditional economic solution is often “trickle-down economics” – the idea that wealth created at the top eventually benefits everybody through investment, job creation and wider economic activity.

The problem is that once wealth reaches a certain level, the maths begins to break.

A household earning £40,000 per year will spend almost all of it because it has to. Mortgage payments, rent, food, transport, energy bills and childcare consume most of their income.

A billionaire earning £40 million per year in interest cannot realistically spend all of it, even if they wanted to.

Instead, surplus wealth often finds its way into assets.

Property.

Commercial property.

Land.

Shares.

Private equity.

Infrastructure.

Basically, stuff that is likely to preserve or increase wealth over time.

This is one of the central themes advanced by economist Gary Stevenson. His argument is that modern economies are increasingly experiencing a concentration of wealth whereby money flows upwards faster than it flows downwards, a trickle up economics, if you will. As wealth accumulates at the top, it is recycled into asset ownership rather than productive consumption.

Whether you agree with all of Stevenson’s conclusions or not, there is a difficult truth we can’t ignore: when more money competes for a finite supply of assets, asset prices tend to rise.

Nowhere is that more visible than in the UK housing market.

Housing Has Become More Than Housing

For most people, a home is somewhere to live. A commercial property is a place for them to carry out business.

For others, property has become an investment vehicle.

When large pools of capital enter property markets, they increase demand without increasing supply.

The result is familiar to anyone working in mortgages.

House prices rise faster than wages.

Deposits become harder to save.

Mortgage affordability becomes increasingly stretched.

Some buyers find themselves competing against others with significantly greater financial resources.

In simple terms, if property is treated as an asset class first and shelter or place of business second, those who already own assets tend to benefit while those trying to acquire them fall further behind.

This creates a widening divide between those who own property and those who do not.

What I See as a Mortgage Adviser

Working in mortgage and later-life lending, I see the consequences of this every day.

Many first-time buyers are not struggling because they are financially irresponsible. They are struggling because the goalposts have moved…..significantly.

A generation ago, a couple could often purchase a home based primarily on their income.

Today, many require parental assistance, gifted deposits or family wealth to get onto the property ladder.

Increasingly, the biggest determinant of whether somebody can buy a property is not what they earn but whether their family already owns assets.

That is a big shift.

It means wealth is becoming inherited rather than earned.

And once wealth starts becoming predominantly inherited, social mobility suffers.

The Political Dimension

Another interesting point is the influence that significant wealth can exert over public discourse.

Throughout history, wealth and influence have often travelled together well.

Today, influence can come through media ownership, political donations, lobbying, campaign funding and social media platforms.

The purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk demonstrated how wealthy individuals can acquire platforms that shape public conversation on a global scale.

Likewise, large political donations inevitably raise questions about access and influence, regardless of which political party receives them. The issue is not necessarily wrongdoing; rather, it is recognising that money amplifies voices.

The more concentrated wealth becomes, the more concentrated influence can become too.

Why Later-Life Lending Matters

Interestingly, later-life lending often sits at the centre of this debate.

Many older homeowners have accumulated significant housing wealth, often through no fault or virtue of their own, but simply because they purchased property at a time when house prices were dramatically lower relative to earnings.

Meanwhile, younger generations often struggle to achieve the same outcomes despite working just as hard.

Products such as lifetime mortgages and retirement interest-only mortgages increasingly serve as tools for intergenerational wealth transfer.

Parents and grandparents are releasing equity to help children and grandchildren with deposits, clear debts or purchase homes.

In effect, later-life lending is sometimes being used to bridge a gap that arguably should not exist in the first place.

It has become a mechanism through which housing wealth accumulated over decades is redistributed within families.

The challenge, of course, is that not everybody has access to that support.

Those with property-owning parents may receive assistance. Those without may find themselves facing a much bigger hill to climb.

A Question Worth Asking

The purpose of this blog is not to criticise success, entrepreneurship or wealth creation.

Successful business owners create jobs, pay taxes, create products and often contribute enormously to society.

Nor is it to suggest that billionaires are responsible for housing affordability problems. Housing supply constraints, planning policy, taxation, population growth and monetary policy all play significant roles. (I could go off on one about a couple of those as well…maybe that’s another Blog inbound!)

However, it is worth asking whether an economic system can remain healthy indefinitely if asset ownership becomes increasingly concentrated in fewer hands.

When one family can possess more than £35 billion of wealth while large numbers of working households struggle to save a deposit, it is reasonable to ask whether the property market is still functioning primarily as a route to home ownership, or a place for your business to operate from, or increasingly as a store of capital.

If wealth generates more wealth faster than wages generate wealth, then over time the gap widens automatically… and it compounds!

And if that widening gap expresses itself most visibly through property ownership, then mortgage advisers, estate planners and later-life lending specialists find themselves sitting on the front line of one of the defining economic issues of our age.

The question is not whether wealth inequality exists.

The question is how much inequality a society can sustain, and what can, or should, actually be done about it.

I think that is a debate worth having.

Sources and Further Reading

This article is an opinion piece and reflects the author’s views on wealth inequality, property ownership and housing affordability. The factual information referenced was drawn from publicly available sources including:

Wealth figures, billionaire rankings and economic statistics were correct at the time of writing but are subject to change. Readers should undertake their own research and refer to the original sources for the latest available data.

The views expressed are those of the author and are intended to encourage discussion around housing affordability, wealth inequality and intergenerational financial planning.

Important Information

Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage or any other debts secured on it.

There may be a fee for mortgage advice. The precise amount will depend upon your circumstances.

Some forms of Buy to Let mortgages are not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

For Lifetime mortgages. To understand the features and risks, please ask for a personalised illustration. Check that this mortgage will meet your needs if you want to move or sell your home or you want your family to inherit it. If you are in any doubt, seek independent advice.

GP Norgate Financial Solutions is a trading name of Easy Street Financial Services Limited, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Easy Street Financial Services Limited is a company registered in England and Wales with company number 6430453. Registered Office: Basepoint, 377-399 London Road, Camberley, Surrey, GU15 3HL.

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