Why do people prefer to rent rather than buying a house?

The Uk is the outlier in this scenario. Renting is much more common in the middle classes across many European countries where security of tenure is much stronger. Renting is also looked upon as a perfectly legitimate form of housing and most tenancies are long term. Unlike UK where there is a pathetic attitude from mortgage payers (people in debt to the bank) that they are somehomw morally and socially superior to renters. Landlords in the UK still imagine they are back in the feudal age and that their tenants are their serfs, rather than their business partners. I post on a landlord forum and the contemptuous way in which many landlords describe their tenants disgusts me. We should begin by outlawing the term "landlord". No one is a lord in 2026. The terms property owner, owner or lessee are perfectly adequate to descrine this kind of business relationship.

You said this in your OP:

As I said, not talking about now, but decades ago.

I've read all your subsequent replies and I cannot for the life of me work out what the point of you starting this thread was. What possible difference to your own or anyone else's situation could it make to know why - decades ago - some people didn't do what you did?

I mean it's just 🤨

There are still a lot of tenant farmers about who rent because decent farmland is unaffordable, or it's still part of the water board's/Lord X's/a very wealthy person's enormous estate.

I have friends who moved out to gain privacy and independence from their parents, to live with partners and start their own families. Some live on their own, so it's much more affordable than a mortgage. Some rent because it's the only way that they can afford to stay in the village where we grew up.

I rent because my house comes with the job. I'll probably stay here, because it's very handy for work, I have no commuting costs, it's rural, quiet, and I like my neighbours. With the way that house prices are going, I don't have much hope of ever being able to afford one on my own.

Are you 85 and haven’t left your hamlet for 30 odd years?

It’s been a given for a couple of decades in the South East that most young people (who don’t have an inheritance) will never own their own homes. Now the rents are so high, many adult children and grandchildren are moving back in with their grandparents for financial reasons.

I get what the OP is saying. I worked with someone my mum's age. She rented. She also took three month overseas holidays every couple of years (being in Australia that's expensive and a good chunk of a house deposit). That's her choice on how she prioritised using her money. However, she's heading for reduced income in retirement and renting. Here rentals are becoming extremely hard to secure and homelessness increasing exponentially. It's not a position I'd like to be in, as women over 50s are leading the way in homelessness here.

OP, surely you know you are coming from a position of privilege. I googled the costs from another poster. £9000 for deposit in 1981 would be about 45k in today's money. Just as hard to afford if you don't have a good paying job or parental help.

We bought because we had help. We had help despite being very well paid professionals.

Exactly, the Op needs to answer this and then they have their answer.

They literally went through the process of renting and saving for a deposit before buying, and yet they can’t comprehend others may be doing the same thing, but just on a longer time scale for various reasons.

You are coming across incredibly slow. How many more times do you need it explained to you?

Even when deposits were “only” 5K that was still too much for some people or maybe they were waiting to find a partner to go halves and share the responsibility of maintaining a house or hoping for an inheritance to come through.

Or perhaps they were in the process of still saving up money before house prices shot up. Or they wanted to spend their 20s travelling with all their spare money or were in education doing masters & Phds etc so thought it could wait.

Most of these people didn’t necessarily plan to rent for multiple decades but life happened and the world changed and they became priced out of the housing market.

What happens if you decide you want to move overseas?

They can still evict to sell. But if they fail to sell they cant rent it out for a year.

Only half the properties which reach market are selling at all so that is a big risk.

Tbh the uk housing market has had its heyday and is not a good investment these days. Other countries might be at a different stage of the housing cycle. Many eastern europeans i know who rent here have homes in eastern europe they own (and plan to retire to which solves the retirement question).. if you ask me to bet on a terraced house in SE or an apartment in warsaw, i would probably choose the latter given the booming polish economy

Yeah, we all know that. And you clearly know that your experience decades ago is not possible today, so what's your question?

The people I know who rent but likely could have bought prefer to have the freedom to move easily (quite a few back to their home countries) to not have the worry of upkeep and to live somewhere they could probably not afford to buy in (e.g. centre of Cambridge). For them it's not a 'lesser than' option, it's an active choice in the same way some people choose to spend £40K on a car.
Some don't have children or partners to consider.

In large swathes of london its cheaper to rent than to buy esp if you invest your deposit. And if you are talking about retirement, given demographics (ageing population) , it would not be unattainable to buy a small home in the north when you reach retirement age if you have been saving and investing for 40 years. So what would be the point of moving to a commuter town, travelling 1.5 hours daily one way just so you have somewhere to live in rent free when it would mean tying up your net worth in 1 property.

Or buying in london where the mortgage is more expensive than rent. I own a 2 bed flat in z3 london, mortgage/service charge is around £500 cheaper than rent but thats only because my flat is small and cheap (400k) and i also have 40% equity and the rent/buy analysis tends to stack up better for cheaper properties. If i wanted a more luxurious and spacious property it would be cheaper to rent. But i cant afford one anyway and i cant afford more than 1 child so it works out..if we earned more and had more money and had more security in earnings, we would definitely rent. The reality is we are too poor to rent. I can see why its so tempting for higher income earners to rent until they are in the stage of their life where they are so senior that they have more flexibility on where they live (so they can buy something with a smaller mortgage) i.e. if you work mainly internationally, you just need to live within driving distance of an airport and go into office couple of times a month, can afford nanny to watch the kids for long days in the office. We will never be in that position, we would use nursery (needs to be in a convenient location to work) and we also rely on public transport. So buying in london also makes sense as well as having a fixed mortgage for budgetting certainty (less of a concern if you have a lot of money). My mortgage is now the equivalent of a room rental in london but for most rich people who own in london, their mortgage is likely to begin with a 4 unless they plunked a huge deposit.

Failing that, its not like they would be priced out of an average uk property when they retire (if they have that in investments they can liquidate).

That changes next week. No landlord will be able to evict a tenant because they feel like it. Rents are falling as well, so iin some ways t's a good time to be a renter.

Will you please stop with your buying with £5K deposit that you got together by working hard and scrimping and saving nonsense.
How many people in the UK in 2026 can buy a house with a £5K deposit?
And even if they could, for those on a low wage, paying today’s utility bills and rent and food prices, how do you think they would be able to save anything towards that ridiculously low deposit of £5K that was enough to buy a house.

I can't afford to buy but even if I could, I like not having to pay for and deal with maintenance. I'm not in the UK, though. I don't have to renegotiate staying every year. That would stress me out.

My deposit was 58k for a 2 bed flat. A 15% deposit..not everyone has that

But you’re not at the mercy of someone else deciding they want to sell your home when they feel like it? Unless you’re talking about social housing, which is really not abundantly available to most nowadays.

We rent because it’s cheaper and because if anything goes wrong I don’t have to find the money to pay to get it fixed if we bought we wouldn’t be able to afford the maintenance. Owning a house isn’t just paying the mortgage it’s everything else on top. I don’t drive for the same reason it’s cheaper to get the bus where I live than to run on a car.

A lot of people just are not a clever as you OP. Or they choose not to work as hard. Or they prefer to spend their money on smartphones and avocados and flatscreen TVs. Or they stupidly chose to study Micky Mouse degrees. Or they are just plain lazy.... Is that what you wanted to hear?

Absolute nonsense

You do understand that if it was possible, a lot of people who rent would buy their own homes, what do you think prevents this ?

LMFAO. The majority of renters have it from the government? Where the rent is paid for you?
The vast majority of renters do so privately because they can’t afford to save for a deposit and/or don’t earn enough for a mortgage in the area they live in.

I know some people who rent because they work globally and/or can afford to rent the place they want to live in for now, not tied to it by debt and no need to deal with maintenance.

The money that others feel they should've put towards buying property? Invested. It's more profitable by many standards, and a great deal more liquid.