JUST a quarter of young people with middle incomes own a home in the UK, down from two thirds 20 years ago.

The drop was recorded by expert researchers at the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS).

House prices have shot up much faster than pay packets, hitting those aged 25-34 hard.

Today’s young adults are much less likely to own their own home than those in their position two decades ago.

In 1995/1996 some 65 per cent of 25 to 34-year-olds with incomes in the middle 20 per cent for their age owned their own home.

By 2015/2016, just 27 per cent of that group were homeowners.

This group of young adults have, after tax, between £22,200 and £30,600 per year, 75 per cent live with a partner, and about 60 per cent have children.

The research found that those born in the late 1980s are much less likely to be homeowners in their late 20s than their immediate predecessors. Indeed, 25 per cent of those born in the late 1980s owned their own home at the age of 27, compared to 33 per cent for those born five years earlier in the early 1980s and 43 per cent for those born 10 years earlier in the late 1970s.

“Home ownership among young adults has collapsed over the past 20 years,” said Andrew Hood, a senior research economist at the IFS.

“For that group, their chances of owning their own home have fallen from two in three in the mid-1990s to just one in four today.”