Almost a third of parents have adult children living at home as house prices shoot up

Grown up children are increasingly less likely to fly the nest says new research

House prices rose by 0.4 per cent in August

Three out of 10 parents (27 per cent) have at least one child between the age of 21 and 40 still living with them, research from the National Housing Federation shows.

66 per cent of adults in the survey, which sampled 1,100 parents, said their son or daughter kept living at home because they could not afford to rent or buy their own place.

The National Housing Federation’s study also said that 89 per cent of people believed there was not enough affordable housing in the UK.

The research comes just as figures published by Halifax show house prices are 5.4 per cent higher this summer than last.

Halifax said prices rose by 0.4 per cent in August, the seventh consecutive monthly increase and that prices over the quarter were 2.1 per cent higher than the previous period.

The lender said that the average price of a house in the UK was £170,231 – the highest it has been since September 2008.

Martin Ellis, Halifax's housing economist said: “Overall, house prices are expected to rise gradually over the remainder of the year.”

Initiatives such as NewBuy and Help to Buy have been aimed at giving people with smaller deposits a leg-up in the housing market.

The Help to Buy scheme is available to first-time buyers and people moving into a newly built home worth up to £600,000.The initiative offers a government-backed loan of up to 20 per cent of the price of the property and aims to make it easier to buy property with a deposit of only 5 per cent.