To feel a rental failure

[Welshie1234]

Basically we rent and always have done mainly because by the time we had saved a deposit we were priced out of the market and due to house price inflation we can't keep up with our savings. I am now 40 and my dh is older and we have 2 kids. We live in an expensive city but have good jobs, friends, a life and the dcs are settled in school and have friends.
I want to own my own house I really do - I hate the insecurity of renting and have worked hard to try and make it happen but we just can't afford a deposit as the goal posts keep changing.
I get constant family pressure- we are viewed as the poor relations, as idiots for not buying sooner. We get comments about how ridiculous it is we pay high rent. A friend said to me that they couldnt imagine being in our 'situation'. I get told 'renting is dead money' regularly. My mother rang me yesterday (final straw) to tell me about my cousin's new house with big garden but the underlying theme is always everyone else can buy so what is wrong with you!

AIBU to feel like some kind of social failure?

I am so fed up of it all and dread (avoid) family occasions as I don't have the answers to our supposed 'situation'.

getting on the housing ladder is such a myth - it depends on getting somewhere you can afford to buy easily and then prices going up hugely so that you make loads of equity and can put a deposit on the next rung...this doesn't always happen.

buy now your small flat in London and you could still not be in position to upgrade in local area when you sell in five years time etc. the jumps in prices from two bed to three or three no garden to terraced house are huge...

or outside London look at those in negative equity now stuck in their "starter home". the ladder only works if you going to downsize later or if your jobs mean you definitely going to increase salary exponentially in next five -ten years...

it's not money down the drain renting - you buying a service. quite possibly in your choice of location/property you could not afford to buy.

and yes lots people on interest only - when they come to sell the equity wont get them very far. and in meantime they've paid the interest plus all repairs etc...

and as mumoftwo said - it can be a positive choice to have more time to give your children memories that don't consist of mum/dad spending hours commuting and/or weekends spent doing nothing but DIY...

My MIL sat in our rented house at the weekend and said how much she disapproves of renting. Coming from the person who was gifted money young and whose husband inherited young too. I wanted to tell her to fuck off to the far side of fuck because we have to rent as I've had to give up a good job to care for her disabled grandchild and have no chance of saving for a deposit.

I think with an ever ageing population that inheritance and property ownership will the realm of the very rich - if you have to sell your house to pay for social care then there will be nothing for your descendants to inherit.

Coming from the person who was gifted money young and whose husband inherited young too

I'm alright Jack...pull up the ladder

suzanne

We live in Spain, DH is long-term unemployed and I earn a low wage. We have some money through inheritance but not enough to buy outright, but we'd never get a mortgage for the rest, and even if we did, then we'd be buggered if there were any maintenance expenses etc as we'd have wiped out our savings and be totally reliant on my small wage. I don't see how things will change and I'm almost 40, so getting old for a mortgage now.
So, we rent. It's not really through choice but it has advantages. We can up and move if we have to, it's not our house to maintain and the LL is good, we're about to sign a 3 yr lease (been on 2 contracts of a year each until now).
We can't really do anything else so we make the best of it. It's a better house than we could afford to buy.

Ask them if they mean to be so rude ?

We live oop north and moved to be near one of the more expensive cities for work, dp sold his flat and made £20,000 we still had to borrow an extra £5,000 from dp's parents and take out a mortgage for 30 years and dp earns 40,000 a year. Just to buy a tiny semi in a village !

My mum regularly makes ignorant comments, I just tell her that if her and my dad were applying for a mortgage now they would be refused one.

They have noooooooo idea

What pisses me off about this thread is the fact that the older generation have absolutely no idea or appreciation how lucky they were and how much harder things are for younger people now.

i feel like this OP, i rent from the council

honestly the attitude some people have towards it is horrendous

cestlavielife - the 'housing ladder' didn't used to mean that, it's only in the last 10-15 or so years we've included house price inflation. It used to be, you'd buy something small with a small deposit, pay down some of the debt to add to the share you own, (and hopefully get pay rises to increase what you could borrow), sell that, have a bigger deposit to buy the next bigger place.

OP - next time your mum says anything, you could say that you can't afford the deposit, so unless she's prepared to give you some money towards that, there's no point mentioning it as you arent' suddenly going to find an extra £20k down the back of the sofa.

what happened 10-15 years ago is irrelevant really - it's about now...

housing ladder starter home on 95% mortgage - no "ladder" is going to work without huge house price inflation. over five ten years...you manage to increase savings to what - 5% of a bigger house? another 95% mortgage... it means long term mortgages really. people effectively renting from banks their whole life. and having cots of maintenance... and If there is down turn in house price? people stuck in their small starter home...

We always rented up until this year. We couldn't afford to buy and both mine and dh's family used to make snide remarks about how renting was dead money and they used to make me feel like we were a massive failure. Even friends used to bang on about how their house had gone up X amount since they bought and how clever they had all been. We felt like complete losers and used to dread social events, as the topic of conversation always used to turn to housing and how unfortunate we were! We finally bought a house this year at the age of 42. Well, we haven't bought it, we have a 25 year mortgage. We were at a family event this weekend and we were asked what we will do when interest rates go up, if something goes wrong with the house, if dh loses his job, etc. I've come to the conclusion people are just rude and get some sort of kick out of making other people feel bad. People will always have an opinion and sadly some people are just bloody rude. You've just got to live your life as best you can and ignore all the snide remarks. Easier said than done though I know Op.

for 'ladder' read 'ponzi scheme'

We rent! I don't feel any shame or embarrassment from it. I love that we can so easily just move somewhere else and not worry about a mortgage etc. We have no debt and are not tied down to this one place forever!

I can go one further, too. We rent a council house! Which is great as we have a full range of services to see to repairs, boilers, pest control etc. We've just had our fence fixed and we're getting a new door. We had nothing when we moved so we also got all furniture and white goods which we pay for on top of our weekly rent.

Saying that, I am 22 and OH is 27. We have a 2 year old and a dog. We probably won't be able to even start saving for a deposit for our own place until I'm in my early 30s and working full time to add to my Husband's wages and I'm okay with that! We have a roof over our head. We have money to pay our bills etc. I might have a slightly different perspective as I have been homeless before and lived in a really damp place with mushrooms growing on it!

It is okay to rent. Don't feel embarrassed! You have a home and that should be enough for your friends and family! :)

It's really none of their business. But I wouldn't understand why people on good salaries would rent rather than buy unless they moved around with their job or similar. But it's nothing to do with them. It's your choice.

Well the concept of what housing ladder used to mean, what it should mean to these conversations with older people because those who did it 20years ago often don't get that it's no longer possible for a lot of people, particularly if they missed the window of opportunity in their lives when they could buy a starter home/flat and it be suitable for their needs. Once you've got a couple of dcs, going from a rented 3/4bed to a 1 bed flat won't work, and as more and more people are having to "skip" some steps on the ladder and go straight to a family sized house as they can't afford the deposit for a flat at the stage a flat would suit them, the opportunity to use that repayment money each month to up your deposit for the bigger home is lost.

I agree you should talk to your mother about what your friends's parents haven given them for a deposit

Buying does have downsides too. My brother and SIL bought a tiny 2 bed flat when they were expecting their daughter, as they thought they should buy. It's been in negative equity for 8 years, they can't get another mortgage as theirs is interest only, and they can't have another child, as there is literally no where to put it.

If they had rented then they could have moved to a 3 bed place. As it is they are trapped til the prices go up, and even then with tighter lending rules they are unlikely to qualify for a mortgage.

To be fair AnneElliot they could rent out their flat and then they could rent a bigger place. That's what I did when I couldn't sell my flat.

For the " on the continent everyone rents, why this obsessions with owning" brigade, may I just point out that on the continent renters have rights, and proper tenancies. I doubt anyone here who thinks they have a long lease actually, legally, does.
Yanbu OP. Private renting is Ok, until you have children and they are nice and settled and your landlord decides he wants to kick you out. And , yes, you can just move (although it costs me hundreds of pounds every time i do, in moving costs, agents fees, and the inevitable money they take off the deposit) but if you need to stay in the same area, and rented family houses are massively in demand it's stressful and shit.
I also had that thought (whoever mentioned it)that once ds has left hone I can't keep paying for a 2 bed, unless my career suddenly goes stellar, and the thought of him having no room to come home to when he is at uni or wherever is awful.

The whole system is a mess. We own a flat in London but let it as we couldn't afford to buy a bigger house there. Instead we moved abroad and rent (and as it's the US, it's a big old house!). Just returned from a visit home and whilst we were there, discovered that said flat has increased in value by £150,000. It's got two bedrooms, it's small and whilst in a great area, at the end of the day is a two bed apartment in a block... Still doesn't help us if we want to move back to London though as all the houses have gone up in price too. The only thing that will help us is if we sell up, then move way out of London (like 100 miles plus out!) and then we might just about be alright for a deposit on a forever house.

If it's any consolation, expats rent all the time and there's no stigma attached as what else can you do? It's certainly not worth buying anywhere here in the US for a couple of years as tax implications mean you're going to make a loss. I hope I'm a good landlord to my tenant in the UK - there are some of us out there!

There is a clear divide among my friends - those who have been given money (owners/mortgage payers) and those that haven't (renters).

Salary and how hard they've worked makes no difference.

I agree LaQueen, but sadly there are some people who do seem to like to make other people feel inadequate or inferior. I'm not sure why, maybe it makes them feel better about their own situation. I've reached a point where I just don't engage with people once they make a derogatory and rude remark, as I think it makes them feel better to think that they have riled you and by dis-engaging they don't get that opportunity.