Margaret Thatcher’s vow to deliver a “property-owning democracy” was exposed as a sham yesterday by new figures confirming that home ownership is permanently out of reach for millions.

Politicians and campaigners called for a new era of low-rent housing after the Office for National Statistics reported prices at record or near-record levels across the country, despite flatlining wages.

First-time buyers trying to escape sky-high rents or living with parents faced the biggest jump of all.

A 13.5 per cent rise in the year to July forced them to splash out £209,000 on average to buy their own home — the largest percentage leap in nearly a decade.

Construction union Ucatt general secretary Steve Murphy warned that high prices risk a massive new crisis because “as interest rates go up and loans have to be repaid many buyers could find themselves in difficulties.”

He urged an end to the discounted “right-to-buy” scheme which forces councils to sell off existing low-rent homes to tenants but does not give them “anything like the money they need to build new homes.”

The latest data to puncture the “property-owning” myth once peddled by arch-Conservative right-to-buy architect Thatcher follows June statistics showing that “average” first-time buyers earned £48,000 and had a £51,000 deposit in the bank.

In London the situation was even worse, with prices up 19.1 per cent to £514,000 across the board and those buying their first home coughing up an eye-watering £405,000.

London Assembly Labour housing spokesman Tom Copley called the prices “staggering.”

Property ownership was an ever more distant dream for people in the capital, he said, urging “failed” Mayor Boris Johnson to finally deliver on promises to build new homes.

Left Economic Advisory Panel co-ordinator Andrew Fisher branded government housing policy “class war.”

High house prices at one end and the bedroom tax and cuts to benefits at the other are creating a home-owning elite and an army of “housing dispossessed” facing eviction and homelessness, he said.