Is owning a home always favourable to renting from a housing association?

[HAhome]

I can’t see any positives to it right now. To afford to buy a property big enough, we’d have to move out of our (nice, safe, community feel) neighbourhood and in to a much less convenient and rougher area.
Even doing that would incur more cost than now - we’d be paying hundreds more a month for the mortgage vs our very cheap housing association rent. We wouldn’t be able to save. I would have to take a very short maternity leave. Probably no days out or holidays.

We moved into this house when it was newly built and our circumstances have changed since. Not so much that we are high earners but we have two full time incomes that are slightly over minimum wage. We still just meet the criteria to be accepted for one of these homes but even if circumstances changed massively we could still stay here.

It’s not perfect but it’s our home, we don’t have to worry about repairs, nobody comes round to do any inspections and we have very very little to do with the housing association unless they write to us to tell us the rent is increasing slightly OR we communicate about a repair that needs doing. Other than that, we can decorate, lay new carpet, do what we want.

There is lots of societal pressure to be home owners but I can’t see how it would make a shred of sense in our current situation. I was listening to the radio the other day and someone who had paid their mortgage off in full was having their house sold to pay for their care in old age.

Is there a massive disadvantage that I’m missing?

If your rent is lower than the mortgage and running costs of buying you can save that for your kids. With the added advantage that you can give it to them before you die.

I wish I had faith that the government will keep supporting low income and those in need. I’m not sure how old the OP is but, by the time she reaches pensionable age, who knows what will remain?

I live in a housing association, it's fine at the moment but I'll have to keep working until state pension age to pay the rent. Which will probably be about 70+ by the time I get there.

How long have you been living there @HAhome

I'd stay where you are

Nothing to leave DC? Put the extra you'd be paying in funds for them

Renting in retirement? Perfectly fine if council, HA or charity/alms. Preferable actually as your "in the system" should you need adaptations, more suitable housing to care

The difference between renting and owning is one day you own your home outright - we have paid off our mortgage meaning we can take early retirement as no housing payments (was £1200 a month). It's not right for all but for most people who aren't fortunate enough to get a housing association house, there is the additional security of having your own home, no dodgy landlord.

John Boughton (author of Municipal Dreams The Rise and Fall of Council Housing) on the welfarisation of council housing.

//www.insidehousing.co.uk/insight/the-rise-and-fall-of-council-housing-56139

Inthe 1980s, residualisation may have been a partly unintended consequence of housing policies pursued with varying ideological intent

Since 2010, and more so since the return of single-party Conservative government in 2015, we’ve seen something further: welfarisation – ‘a conception of social housing as a very small, highly residualised sector catering only for the very poorest, and those with additional social “vulnerabilities”, on a short-term “ambulance” basis

I'm not sure what you are asking. Renting is never as good as a mortgage, because renting is wasted money. But if you can't afford it, you can't afford it, so ......