Homeowners - could you afford to rent on your street?

[MidnightPatrol]

Worth a quick Google to find out how much it costs to rent on your street in 2024, as prices have shot up!

I only bought my house 3 years ago. Rental prices have gone up by about 50% (!) since then. There’s absolutely no way I could afford to rent here.

How on earth are people supposed to afford to rent their own properties (ie not sharing).

No, not even one of the flats in the house that has been converted.

We have a medium sized 4 bed detached in a nice-ish area. Thankfully we have now paid off our mortgage, so whilst we could afford to rent, it would take quite a chunk out of our salaries.

We could just about afford it, but it would be more than double our mortgage payment.

Not a chance. House just rented for £1500 a month a few houses up and it was in a lot worse condition than our house. It is crazy money for a small, 3 bed semi on the south coast. In context we bought ours in 2021 and our mortgage is 800 a month.

Yes I could. It would be more than my mortgage, but we could afford it as we didn’t stretch ourselves when we bought our house so have a fair amount of disposable income.
I wouldn’t actually want to pay double for a similar house though!

No, definitely not.
We have paid off our mortgage and are on (private) pension income only.

We probably could have afforded it when we were both working FT but it's hard to compare. And if we had rented, we wouldn't be living here now in retirement! Well, we couldn't have retired, being free of mortgage / rental payments was a key factor in the decision.

No, the only similar property available for rent in my town is an incredible £7,000 a month. I can't imagine anyone having that money to pay on rent. It is insane.

Much cheaper to rent than but here

Houses in my area go for about £1200-1400 rent, I pay a lot less as I rent from a friend who only wants to cover the mortgage, so I'm in the rare position, at the moment, of paying less in rent than I would for a mortgage on a similar property.

Where I own a house, my mortgage is £450 and rents are about £900, but xh lives in the property so not seeing any benefit!

No, my next door neighbours have just put theirs up for rent at a ridiculous £5250 per month. The last time someone let a house on our street a couple it was rented for £3500 per month which I thought was a crazy price then.

My daughter was paying well over a grand for her 4 bed house £1250 ( 2 small bedrooms).En suite. Family bathroom.. utility room. Garage.
I bought it for her 2 years ago ( out right) luckily the landlord was willing to sell. Paid £690,000
Now same house on her street across the road is £2200 a month rent.

Absolutely not, rent would be 3-4 times more than our mortgage.

We could do it at a push but life would be miserable, they'd no money for anything else.

As have older generations. Perhaps more so than younger ones because their plight is not only rarely acknowledged but there's almost zero help or concern for them

2 million over 50s are private renting. Stats show they're the poorest renters and many have been in long-term poverty. Not through any fault of their own. Doing the important low paid jobs, or a Shit Happens life event, like illness, domestic violence, absent parent not paying child support, etc.

I got a leaflet yesterday from one of the candidates in the GE. All their housing talk was about helping the young. Nothing for older renters.

Anyway to answer your question OP, no I don't think I could afford to rent here. Our mortgage is lower than the advertised rents round here.

ETA. I don't think I'd have been able to get a mortgage if I'd been single. We got it on my and DH's combined salaries.

For context, we bought our house in 2010 and our mortgage is about £600.

It would actually be cheaper! Mortgage is £1400 and the house a couple of doors down is rented for £1200.

(3 bed terrace in the NW, we were first time buyers in 2022, for context)

Out of curiosity I just did the calculations online, the rental estimate for my property is around £1220 a month and my mortgage is only £644 a month. However we have been on the property ladder 10 years so have lot of equity and access to better rates. I did a quick calculation based on what it would be like to buy it now with a 10% deposit over 25 years at 5% interest and the payment was £1379 a month! So I can't afford to rent or buy my own house!

I have no idea as I don't think any of the houses on our street have ever been rented. I don't think any of the houses are worth less than £500k (not London or home counties).

No way, bought my house in 2007 and now it's only yuppies and city folk that can live there

I mean for context, that is an entire £100,000 salary after tax.

How many people can afford that? What percentage of their income is it?

Yes. It would be quite a lot more than my mortgage, but then you wouldn't have the cost of repairs/maintenance/insurances etc if you were renting.

Not a chance - I've just looked on Rightmove and a house on our road is almost £4k a month to rent, our mortgage is £1500. The rental market is insane!

This is such an interesting topic. Our mortgage is about £500 a month. Dh earns a decent salary. If we had to rent our house it would be between £2.5k+£3k a month. It would be a struggle

Surprisingly having just looked, yes, and for not much more than our mortgage. We have only recently bought in the area so our mortgage is at its max and on a post-Truss interest rate, so probably more in line with movements in rents than someone who had been in for 10+ years or is still on a pre-Truss fix. Also the places which are available to rent, whilst meeting the brief in terms of size/rooms, are all in pretty poor condition so not a proper like-for-like swap.

I would be gobsmacked if it rented at that price. It’s definitely more than my salary after tax and I’m not on low pay!

No it's a ruddy disgrace how expensive it is to rent around here.
Even local authority mid market rents are eye watering and increase every Yr.
Feel really sorry for people trying to get on housing ladder as how can you save but pay so much monthly.