ABSTRACT
The post-war period in Britain has seen the consolidation of owneroccupation as the most important numerical and therefore most politically sensitive sector of the housing market. In the 1960s and 1970s Labour governments also attempted to extend home-ownership. The bulk of the Labour movement has never been opposed in principle to owner-occupation. A major incentive to owner-occupation in the late twentieth-century was tax relief on mortgage interest payments, an allowance geared to the standard/basic rate of income tax. Scotland has the lowest level of owner-occupation of all the countries making up the United Kingdom. A final way of facilitating low-cost home-ownership is through homesteacling arrangements. The availability of long-term finance is essential to an ever-expanding owner-occupied sector. The causes of the boom were numerous, but essentially derived from an increase in the general level of demand for home-ownership.
