Startling figures released by Eurostat, the European Commission's official statistics bureau, show that 64.6 per cent of households in Britain are owner occupiers - well below the 73.3 per cent peak in 2007.
Britain's total is also well behind the all-Europe average of around 70 per cent owner occupation.
The Eurostat figures - although only just issued - are for 2013 and analysts such as Matthew Pointon of British consultancy Capital Economics believes the proportion of British owner-occupiers will have fallen further during 2014.
Eurostat also claims that of the approximately 2.9m new homes constructed in Britain between 2000 and 2012, some 2.5m of them have gone into the private rented sector - presumably mostly through individual buy to let and more recently through build to let.
Perhaps Eurostat's single most controversial claim is that only 400,000 of the homes constructed in that 12 year period were purchased by owner occupiers.
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