Here is something of a mystery. Northern Ireland has by far the cheapest housing in the UK, 40% cheaper on average, yet we have the highest proportion of young adults living in the parental home.
New analysis from the Institute of Fiscal Studies puts the figure at almost a quarter of 25 to 34-year-olds, more than any other region. The UK average is 18%.
Previous studies have claimed a third of this age group in Northern Ireland have not “permanently” left home – they are still boomeranging back to their childhood bedrooms for various reasons.
Other statistics show a similar gap for 20 to 24-year-olds, with over 80% living at home in Northern Ireland, compared to a UK average of 75%.
This is a long-term phenomenon. All these figures have risen significantly across the UK since the 1990s and Northern Ireland has kept its first place largely throughout.
The discrepancy has no obvious economic explanation. Of course, we have serious problems with housing affordability and availability, but generally less so than everywhere else.
Buying the average home here requires five times the average income, a lower multiple than Scotland and 93% of council areas in England and Wales. The UK average is eight times income.
First-time buyers in Northern Ireland require the smallest and most affordable deposit anywhere except the north-east of England. We also have the best affordability across all income groups.
Roughly speaking, no matter how badly off you are, housing is more easily within reach here than almost anywhere else.
Buying is a daunting step to leaving home. Renting should be an interim or long-term option for young people.
Again, while there are serious affordability and availability problems in Northern Ireland’s rental market, they are not as bad as elsewhere.
Belfast is the second-most affordable city in the UK for renters, while Mid and East Antrim is the most affordable council area.
Northern Ireland does have fewer one-bedroom flats and small houses than the UK average, making it difficult for young people to move out on their own.
The wider rental shortage enables landlords to be fussy and many refuse to rent to groups of young people, certainly unless they are young professionals, for fear of the dreaded ‘party house’. This is a major obstacle to leaving the nest.
But here is another mystery. There was effectively no private rental market in Northern Ireland before the mid-1990s: your options were social housing or becoming a lodger. Yet more young people still managed to leave home than today.
University should be another key step into independent living. Over 40 per cent of 18-year-olds in Northern Ireland go to university, the highest figure in the UK. This is double the rate in the 1990s and is set to continue climbing.
Students are sometimes counted as living at home, despite having moved out, so statistics on this must be treated with caution. Nevertheless, a doubling of numbers should have created a clear trend of more young people living independently, both before and after graduation. It is striking that the opposite appears to be the case.
An explanation has been offered for this mystery.
In 2019, Prof Paddy Gray of Ulster University and the Chartered Institute of Housing linked it to the tendency of Northern Ireland’s students to go home every weekend or commute from home, behaviour linked in turn to the region’s small size.
If so, university growth here may postpone independence as much as encourage it.
Prof Gray also suggested rising house prices mean people are staying home for longer to save up a deposit. This is where Northern Ireland’s relative affordability may have a perverse effect. Because the goal of saving appears more reachable, more people will attempt it.
In London, it would take the average first time buyer 31 years, so more people there are resigned to renting and getting on with their lives.
Anecdotally, a popular way for young people to get on the property ladder in Northern Ireland is to obtain a group mortgage for a shared house or apartment, then buy each other out as they move on.
This is very sensible but it does emphasise the common view here that renting is a waste of money, even in your youth.
The elephant in the room on this issue is whether we have a deeper cultural resistance to cutting the apron strings, perhaps due to being a more conservative society.
In the absence of better explanations, that must presumably be a factor.