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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To be really worried about the prospect of privately renting forever?

83 replies

Confusedmartie999 · 10/05/2015 16:17

I'm in my early 30s and always have privately rented since I was 18 after my mum moved to the country and I stayed for my job / friends.
I then met my husband who was flatsharing so we moved in together 8 years ago.
This was the wrong decision as obviously once we were shelling out £900 for a 2 bed flat we weren't able to save hardly anything.
Anyway, here we are now, 2 children later and I've recently gone back to work evenings to top up our income so monthly we now bring in £2400 and our rent is £1100 so again nothing to save once we pay for everything we need and the kids stuff / travel to and from work etc.
what happens when we are old age pensioners who won't have he deposit / ref fees / month in advance every time a landlord decides to sell or increase the rent beyond outlet affordability? Where will we end up? :-(

OP posts:

Superworm · 11/05/2015 13:39

It's a horrible situation, I really feel for you op. Lots of people are having to move far away from where they want to be, it's a terrible state of affairs.

Damnautocorrect · 11/05/2015 13:55

The thing with moving away is surely that then has a knock on affect in that area too?
All these councils shipping people hours away to private rentals is just pushing the prices up there.

TooManyHouseGuests · 11/05/2015 13:55

It's a mess. I want people to be able to buy their own homes, not just improving renting which isn't want people want.

I am in early middle age and lucky enough to own a home, with a mortgage. We could never buy this house today from "a standing start." It really is unfair. I'd love to see house prices stagnate for a long time. It wouldn't hurt me because my house is somewhere to live, not an investment.

Wages need to catch up to house prices. I think this will only happen if conscious choices are made to change the tax system around owning more than one home. I think people should have lots of support to own their first home, but get absolutely hammered when they buy a second one. Leave the business of being a landlord to the professionals who are running it as a real enterprise and paying corporate taxes. Foreign speculators need to be curbed too, they are driving a fair bit of the market in the South East and the ripples affect everyone.

Beth2511 · 11/05/2015 13:57

We are utterly trapped. We have 2 adults and a child full time lus another part time in a small one bed... We physically can't afford the rent on a two bed until I go back to work in August and even then we have no chance of saving the 2500+. We are on the housing list so it feels like we are trapped here until we get to the top of the two year wait :(

clarinet9 · 11/05/2015 14:14

All those saying what about labour etc you do realise that it was Blair and Brown that caused all the bloody HPI don't you?

FWIW even on 100K a year you couldn't buy (on a trad mortgage 10% deposit 3x salary) about 90% of the places where I used to live

House prices need to decrease to match wages IMHO for lots of reasons including the fact that high house prices transfer money from the young to the old and the poor to the rich (not MY phrase sadly because it is so true) and because it is absolutely crazy that for the vast majority a house is the most expensive thing they will ever buy yet we are all supposed to celebrate when it goes up in price it is illusory wealth.

SomewhereIBelong · 11/05/2015 14:58

Damn... - you don't buy a 3 bed semi.... you buy a crappy bedsit with a friend - sharing one big room with 2 single beds, with kitchenette and bathroom - like we had to in the 80s to get on the ladder. A 3 bed semi is not a "starter" home.

trouble is people have kids now before they think of buying, so sharing a bedsit would be grim.

TooManyHouseGuests · 11/05/2015 15:05

Well said clarinet9! Exactly so. I am one of the illusory wealth winners at the moment, and I can see that this situation does me no good and many others quite a lot of harm.

Damnautocorrect · 11/05/2015 15:35

somewhere
A one bed flat is £200,000 - £250,000 here so we wouldn't get that either.

SomewhereIBelong · 11/05/2015 15:47

one bed flat and bedsit are 2 different things - if I search bedsit london there are a number of bedsits for under £100k - not the nicest areas, not the biggest spaces, but they are there - esp the "do-er uppers" that make the money for the next step up.

Depends if you want to own a crappy property, do it up and move on - or live in rented "luxury" where it is all done by someone else. When I was 19 I was prepared to sleep in a shed if need be to get on the ladder (sometimes it would have been warmer and certainly dryer)- now with 2 kids, ...not so much...

Mrsfrumble · 11/05/2015 15:56

trouble is people have kids now before they think of buying

Bullshit. People have kids while renting because if they waited until they could afford to buy it would be too late. We did plenty of "thinking about buying" in our 20s, watching property prices get higher and higher while our wages stayed the same and our rent ate up so much that we struggled to save. We hit our 30s and realised that we couldn't wait forever. Having children in a privately rented 2 bed flat is not ideal, but if we hadn't gone ahead I'd be in my late 30s with my fertility declining, watching property prices get higher and higher while our wages stay the same and our rent eats up so much we struggle to save....

BabyGanoush · 11/05/2015 15:57

at the idea of a 3 bed semi as a starter home.

We started with a 1 bed flat in a part of town some people would not even visit.

Only moved to a house when kids were 6 and 4 and we'd managed to save a bit more.

Still, the current situationsucks...

Damnautocorrect · 11/05/2015 16:11

somewhere
Rent in luxury?????!
I live in a small 2 bed house with no central heating, no double glazing and no heating.

I've also had to re plaster, retile, rewire, re plumb re fence the house as it was dangerous /damp/ didn't work.

Mrsfrumble · 11/05/2015 16:19

No, a three bed semi is not a starter home. But it is probably what the parents of a 30-something with 2 kids in a 2 bed private rental owned when they were at that stage in their lives, working at similar jobs with similar qualifications.

Everyone needs to adjust their expectations I guess. I'm actually at peace with our circumstances; it's not ideal but it could be worse; but there is going to be a wider impact in the future when this generation reaches old age.

The80sweregreat · 11/05/2015 16:32

it really sucks and my own 2 will be exactly the same, I did hear one politician say that new homes are going to be built , but how much they will be etc wasn't mentioned or where. it needs addressing, but with the new government I fear it will just go on the back burner. My own dad and in laws have always rented and never bought and they are late 90s. people think that's odd, but its the way it is for them. At least dad hasn't had to maintain the house or pay out for new boilers or anything like that, but that's not a silver lining if you really want your own place and why shouldn't you? ( they are council tenants too , so a bit more protected than the private shambles seems to be). I hope things improve over time.. you never know!

SomewhereIBelong · 11/05/2015 16:42

YY Mrsf - I "owned" mortgaged up to the hilt a 3 bed semi at 30 - it was my 5th property - and the first one I owned on my own, not with one or 2 friends (only way to have a salary to loan ratio that allowed me to buy)

Damnauto... sorry, don't know what to say that could help

verbeier · 11/05/2015 16:54

I'm in the sane boat. Myself and DH work and we live in a tiny two bed flat with 2 kids. My DC keep asking why we live in a flat, and it makes me cross because, damn it, we work hard and should earn enough. We have been to a few open mornings recently, and they are jam packed with BTLers (they talk loudly about yields). Our letting agent treats us like dirt under her feet - in eight years of renting, have not been treated with more contempt by LAs as we are now.

Mrsfrumble · 11/05/2015 17:07

If I had a time machine maybe I would take DH and I back to 2003 to try and buy a bedsit in zone 5 rather than renting a titchy 1 bed in an iffy neighborhood in zone 2 like we did (after a few years of "young ones" style house shares under our belts). But as naive young things in our 20s we didn't predict that prices in London (to buy OR rent) would rise sharply and non-stop for the next 12 years (and neither did any of the "proper grown-ups"; parents or older friends; around us who were more experienced in the property market).

YorkieButtonsizeMen · 11/05/2015 17:27

Is it buy to let that has caused this? If so, could it be regulated more so that people are only allowed to let out say one, or two properties - rather than the ten-twenty-thirty that some landlords have? That would put more availability on the market, prices would drop, perhaps...I don't know but it seems the more you have, the more you accumulate.

I wish I could buy everyone who rents, a house of their own.

suzannecanthecan · 11/05/2015 17:36

could it?
probably
will it?
doubtful
for one thing a lot of MPs own multiple investment properties

suzannecanthecan · 11/05/2015 17:38

Estimates suggest that at least a quarter of our MPs are landlords. Many own multiple properties in London or the south-east. We can't be entirely sure of the number because, remarkably, MPs are not required to list the capital gains or rent they make each year from property. Is it any wonder the most significant element of the cost-of-living crisis – housing costs – is something MPs are so uncomfortable about tackling?

sallysimpson · 11/05/2015 17:46

3 bed semis are available at around average salarys in different parts of the country, dh and I have bought just that with a 10% deposit (saved while privately renting at £600pcm with 2 dc, and some help from dp so we could buy a year before we planned to do on our own after we were served notice because we turned down landlords offer to buy our rental which he had never maintained the time we were there!err no! )we earn 35000 between us, him ft and me pt and borrowed 3 times our combined income. Our mortgage is less than our rent. What pushed us was our latest landlord constantly throwing around that he would be selling soon as he needed to buy a new car etc. No way to live at all, especially with dc. We were made to feel like visitors in his home, and that we should be eternally greatful to it! Incidently the LL bought our rental after cashing in his council house he bought thanks to Maggie and buying 2 'starter' homes with the proceeds! Thankfully homes around here are within reach for normal working families, just wish the rest of the country was the same.

mistymeanour · 11/05/2015 17:50

Very few houses have been built to keep up with the housing demands of the population which has risen substantially and is continuing to rise since the 1990's, especially in areas where people want to live (for jobs) such as large cities and towns.

Big Landowners/Establishment want the value of their land and hence property prices to rise. The governments over the past 20 years, despite what they might say, also want house prices and thus rents to rise as Housing costs and imputed costs (what it would cost to rent your mortgaged/owned house) are used as part of the measure for "growth in the economy" through GDP. So if housing costs rise this year by 10% then this will be factored into the calculation for economic growth. Since, I don't see much evidence of industrial growth, the rise in house prices is needed to make it look like the economy is thriving. It is all a big Ponzi scheme!

SomewhereIBelong · 11/05/2015 18:00

growth in the economy very much depends on rising house prices - people will release capital whilst interest rates are so low, and they will buy stuff with that capital - rather than saving for stuff, they will also stretch themselves to a bigger house than they would normally be able to afford, make improvements, buy new furniture - what is the point of saving money to be eroded by inflation.

When inevitably, interest rates rise, we will see what a "depression" in the economy really means.

windchime · 11/05/2015 19:56

I thank god that there are people who have bought to let so that I can rent from them. In return, I only have to pick up the phone when the boiler packs up, slates blow off the roof or the garden fence collapses. Love it. All those people who have a mortgage albatross around their necks will be saddled with bills and repairs for the rest of their lives. Or until they have to sell up to pay their care home fees. I can give a month's notice and move to anywhere I want with no hassle. Renting is the future. You read it here first

madreloco · 11/05/2015 19:57

You all want to be capitalists with your wages and spending and communists when it comes to your housing and healthcare.
The naivety is shocking.

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