to not give a toss about getting on the <boak> property ladder?

[Headbanger]

Oooo, my first AIBU

The Old Man and I were brought up, like most Brits I guess, to believe that renting was the preserve of the flighty and irresponsible and ill-advised, and that the only sensible thing to do was to buy your own home.

You know where this is going (no points for originality here): we are professionals, married 10 years, hoping to start a family, but cursed with being Londoners, and of the generation that began being gently and discreetly screwed into student debt by the Government and then being savagely shafted thereafter.

We have a respectable income, but it is so eaten up by debts and the cost of London living that we are focusing all our efforts on paying the debts off, and there is little left over.

There is no hope of us ever buying our own property: our jobs are public sector and/or the arts, and we would need to save a deposit of around £40k, and get a mortgage of something like 8 times our combined income. We're from unwealthy backgrounds, and there will be no bequests or lump sums appearing on the horizon.

Of course we could leave our hometown, but kindly do not suggest this because I don't see why we bloody should: our families are Londoners for generations, we know its very stones, all our friends are here, etc.

So (get on with it woman): AIBU to ignore all this guff about home-owning being the be-all and end-all, and be quite content renting? Our monthly rent is less than a mortgage payment would be; someone else pays for the plumbing; a nice couple come and mow the lawns; if it all goes bent, or all goes better, we can up sticks in a month.

And I'm talking planning on renting long-term here - ten, fifteen years, with (hopefully) children, and all that that entails. Maybe forever, unless one of us gets that pesky half-million book deal.

Is this irresponsible? Should we eat spaghetti hoops on toast (erm, even more than currently )and go live in Zone 72 or parts of the country we know nothing about, and where our friends are hundreds of miles away, just to say 'Oh yes, we own our own home you know'?

Do any other MN'ers rent from choice? Are you happy with it? AYBU?!

Most importantly, do you think there will be a cultural change, and people will care less about that holy grail of the mortgage, and tenants will (like Germany f'rinstance) get lovely long-term leases, with security and permission to paint over the sodding magnolia paint?

I thank you.

I don't think its a problem to rent, if your happy. But renting certainly does have its downsides, one big one is the lack of security. People talk about not being responsible for repairs, all the landlords problem, well thats only if the ll can be bothered to do them.

Long term (twenty/thirty years) renters will usually loss out. But the obsession people have with homes is also a problem, I think plenty of home owning pensioners are living in poverty because they are clinging to a large family home they can't afford to heat but refuse to sell.

Also the rights of tenants and LL is too much in favour of the LL (and I say this as one) and need to be addressed. An ideal situation would be if property were cheaper and people could afford to buy. I own, and am sitting pretty but my children are fucked.

BTW Expat did you hear what happened to my petition?

Downside of owning- Took us a more than a year to sell our last house. We are having building work done on this house (bought in January) and keep uncovering more and more problems with it that we have to pay to fix.

darcy, what happened?

I think for most people house purchase brings benefits later in life. We're approaching 50 and nearing the end of our 25 year mortgage. So we'll have years of living rent and mortgage free in order to build up our pension. But I suppose that's because we haven't overstretched ourselves - we've been in this house nearly 20 years now and extended it about 8 years ago when we could afford it.

People run into trouble when they take out too large a mortgage - especially when prices take a tumble. I think you're very wise not to take on a 10X salary mortgage - total madness

Fucking new government cancelled it! Mine and everyone else on the Downing Street web site .

I wrote to them about it instead.

I love owning property. I'm somewhat obsessed with it, and own four houses. But - big but - I was given a lump sum a while back. Had it not been for that, I would probably still be looking longingly in estate agent windows. I certainly wouldn't take a mortgage of even five times DH's income, never mind ten!

Personally I wouldn't rent in a zillion years (indeed, all my income comes from renting property out to other people). But YANBU for wanting to do so yourself, OP.

Fortyplus, the reason you didn't overstretch yourself was because you bought 20 years ago (like me), it is nothing to do with our good sense we have just been lucky. For most people it must be almost impossible to not overstretch to buy anything now.

Plus I think the idea that renters are irresponsible and not thinking about the future is laughable. Most renters do so because they have never been able to afford to buy a house not because they spend all their money on champagne

OP, I think you are right to feel somewhat smug for renting in the current climate.

Well, I'm one of those 'idiots' who took out a 6x income 90% interest only mortgage in 2006.

And compared to my renting peers I'm quids in.

My property is still worth £10-15k more than when I bought it (free money)and since interest rates sunk I'm paying £250pcm less than I would be if I was renting it.

Im just curious fairy ,but why do you think people pay taxes/national insurance ? At the end of the day if someone has worked and paid their taxes /national insurance for say 30-40 years ,do you not think they are entitled to nursing care ? Given that so many things have been eroded from the nhs . For instance my father had a large unsightly mole/wart on his arm ,he went to the GP who refered him to a special clinic within the nhs hospital ,he was told that it was benign but that it could become malignant in the future ,my father asked how he would be able to tell and was told that he probably wouldnt until it was too late and so it was better to remove it . Great thought my father ,until they told him it would cost £200 to remove ,obviousley he paid up ,rather than face the uncertainty of a slow and painful death in the future .He has been paying tax and national insurance for 48 years .

to be fair renting a HA property is different to renting in the private market ,the rental terms are long term and should i die before my youngest child reaches the age of 18 ,the tenancy automatically passes into their name via whoever is responsible for them ,thus ensuring a home for them ,once they reach 18 they can take over the tenancy in their own name .We can also decorate how we like and if we wanted to and could afford it put a conservatory on . I will say though that if it were possible mortgage wise to but a small property and rent it out for the next 15 -20 years i would

You pay tax to have a functioning state. The state then decides how to spend the money.

By the moonlight - can you rent your house out and then rent somewhere else?

Never, darcy! I'm not surprised! Have you contacted your MP, or is she/he a Tory?

We are HA tenants. When our children leave, we can ask to be moved to a smaller flat.

Yes, I know my MP, he is a Tory, I've never spoken to him about my one man campaign though. I have written to both the housing and equalities ministers, I was planning to do that anyway but just waiting until after the election.

coalition that unfortunately is the problem

I am sorry I cant understand people wanting to rent rather than buy unless you are always on the move and want to change location every year it makes no sense at all.

I bought my flat in the 80s for 25k it was in a rough area of London, but that rough
area morphed into trendy Clapham and house prices and rents went through the roof.

Renters always say to buyers 'your property is not yours until you have paid the mortgage
so therefore you are still paying rent albiet to a Building Society - thats true enough but in 2008 the last year of my mortgage my repayments were £135 a month that was for a 2 bed Edwardian Flat with garden and I know that the flat next door was rented out at £900 per month.

Owning my flat enabled me to sell it this year for 250k and buy a semi detached cottage for 125k for cash on the IOW

Yes I have had to pay for new double glazing and a new fire whilst renters would get that paid for by the landlord, but would your landlord pay for a new glass back door with cat flap ( if he let you have a cat that is)
would he let you choose your windows like me or do you get the cheapest he can get, if he puts in a new fire I bet it would be a bog standard one, not the Cast Iron Victorian Replica that I have just have fitted.

And what happens to you when you can no longer pay your rent due to age, where will you live?

Buying my own place was the best thing i ever did

islandlady , werent you the lucky one ! if i had been able to buy in the 80's ,whilst still in full time education and with forsight of knowing that the hosue prices would increase by over 100% in the space of 18 months ,i too would be in a similar posistion

my niece and nephew rent in sandringham, norfolk and their gorgeous property is owned by the queen. They have lifelong tenancy as long as they pay the (very reasonable) rent and dont scare the corgis! Ideal solution, everthing else is shit. Renting is just money in someone elses pocket with nothing at the end, buying is lifelong poverty and worry. Off to jump of a cliff. Hopeless for young people nowadays

'And what happens to you when you can no longer pay your rent due to age, where will you live'

You apply for means-tested housing benefit.

So now you will say people like this are scroungers, even if, unlike you, they were too young to buy or were not here in the 80s, but still they worked all their lives, for low pay or now, even middle-earner pay, after the bubble had grown, so they were never afford to buy.

Yet they still worked, they still paid tax and NI, they still paid their landlord, who was maybe even you.

They are not scroungers. They are, and will be, people who did not benefit from the gains of people in years past.

This is not their fault, and they are not feckless and scroungers.

It was the best thing for you, because you had luck others did not and will not.

Even my own father realises the comfort in which he is retired is at least partly due to the luck of the timing in which he was born.

I take exception to the assumption I am a feckless loser because I did not risk foolery to buy in 2004, or hte roof over my children's heads.

And I encourage my own children to flee their own country as soon as they can, for even their accent will stand them in better stead elsewhere than here.

That is the legacy. That is the future generation.

There will be the few whose parents benefitted from how things were and so got a leg-up to buy, or had some luck, or got high-paying jobs or some other less-than-usual circumstance.

But there will be countless others, not even welfare claimants, who have not this advantage, who will flee, for the British do not revolt.

Thats not what I meant actually I haven't called anybody a scrounger, my own parents who are 79 have always rented ( Council and then HA) as they have never earned enough to buy.

It worries me that a lot of people will lose their homes in old age when if they had bought would have had more security.

And although you say its tough for the young
we had a full price offer from a FTB with 4 days of the flat going on the market - the EA didnt even have time to put up the for sale sign, which was probably due to the fact that we priced it at 90k below 2007 prices and 30k below other flats in the same area

Rent for the house we are in near Brussels is more per month than the mortgage on our house in the UK (or would be if we were paying full rent and not a Married Quarter rent).

The tax breaks in Belgium are different for landlords here I understand, and they do nicely. My landlord owns at least 2 houses, and his sister owns two as well. They are all retired and live off the rent plus pensions.

Housing is vv expensive here - no stamp duty, but 17% on top of price for taxes and fees. If you sell within 5 years, you pay CGT as well, so the property owning is more financially viable in the UK.

Letting here is long term - either a 3 or 9 year contract, but heavily weighted in favour of the landlord; as a landlord myself for my house in the UK, I have no rights compared to what they have here.

We have about 11 years to go on the mortgage, and then we will have a house in a lovely part of the UK that we can use to realise capital when we are older if we need to.

Interestingly, my current tenants are pensioners, and some landlord insurers won't pay out for non payment of rent unless those tenants who are pensioners can provide proof that their pensions are in excess of £25k pa, or they have a large lump sum in the bank. So, some private l/ls won't want to rent to pensioners....

'Allo all.

Could I just clarify - since I think there has been some misunderstanding - I am not saying that intend to rent medium-long term out of some carefully considered philosophical principle!

We probably could buy. But it would mean sacrificing everything; leaving our debts unpaid whilst we saved for the deposit; sinking ourselves into a vast mortgage over a very long period; probably leaving the city and friends we love; taking on debt many, many times our combined wages (assuming we'd be given a mortgage, which isn't likely - Hey Tony B, thanks for fucking up my generation, I'll buy you a drink sometime! ); and so on.

Of course if I suddenly inherited a £50k deposit, the flat we rent went on the market for £175k, and both our salaries shot up (and we all know how likely that is to happen in the public sector, don't we folks!) then we'd buy. We're not idiots.

What I am challenging is the perception that buying is the Holy Grail, and that you should do so at all costs.