There has been lots of discussion recently about how much more the ‘1%’ earn than everyone else. There has been less attention paid to how much more they own.
In fact, wealth (what people own) is more unequally distributed than income.
This chart gives you an idea of just how unequally distributed wealth is in the UK.
Wealth includes things like pensions and stocks. If we just concentrate on housing wealth (Total housing wealth in the UK stands at something like £3,375 billion) we see a similar picture. Here is how housing wealth is distributed.
House prices have increased significantly, even adjusting for inflation, since the 1970s as this chart shows.
However, this has not uniformly benefited all homeowners.
But has hugely benefitted those who own expensive houses.
Many of whom are not born in the UK.
Dream Housing 
Very nice. Thanks. Can you clarify please (i) date to which data refers ? 2012??? (ii) Is the property wealth (actually housing, according to the text) chart the net wealth (house value-debt) or gross house value? I suspect it’s net.
Sorry. Good points Michael.
The fist chart comes from this report for Birmingham university http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/research/SocialSciences/Key-Facts-Background-Paper-BPCIV.pdf their wealth data is from the ONS’s report looking at wealth in 2008
Yes, it is net value. It’s also from the ONS although I made the chart myself. More detail on their data here http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/was/wealth-in-great-britain-wave-2/2008-2010–part-2-/index.html