<p>Mortgage costs for first time buyers have hit a 16-year high and a third of working households can no longer afford to buy, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF). The report, by the New Policy Institute for the JRF, claims that the ratio of mortgage costs to average earnings for first time buyers is now 36%, the highest since 1990, leaving a third of all working households struggling to buy. NPI director and report co-author Guy Palmer warned: “Our analysis points to worrying prospects for those on middle incomes and below.</p> <p>The government needs to refine the methods for judging regional and local imbalances between household growth and the housing stock.” Linden chief executive Philip Davies also called on the government to act. “More needs to be done to expand existing shared ownership schemes, making it accessible to a wider spectrum of people, while releasing more land for development, enabling housebuilders to tackle the housing shortage.” The National Housing Federation has called for 80,000 affordable homes to be built every year to combat the problem. Its director of strategy Liz Atkins said: “We’ll need more resources in next year’s comprehensive spending review, backed up with planning reform, before we …