"In Europe most people rent"

[cheesyinkent]

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home_ownership_rate

Why do people constantly say this when it's not true and the UK has one of the highest renting rates in Europe? France has a similar home ownership rate and renters over there have way more rights.

I know, crazy. My husband tells me that it was more like a 125% mortgage. I underestimated it.

Grace I'm kinda jealous right now.

German resident here. Yes, lot of people rent for all the reasons already stated, but esoecially when young and establishing careers or in very low-paid jobs.
However, the house building/buying model here is quite different to the UK. You would normally expect to have a 33% deposit when buying, which is achieved through special savings schemes. Furthermore people tend not to buy until they know they are going to remain in an area for a long time. I also know people who own a house but let it out until the mortgage is paid off, which can typically take only 10 years.
However, as others have also already posted, tenants have better rights & landlords are often most interested in their tenants staying longer term.

I'm in the north of Italy and the people I know who rent have really long contracts - almost permanent. Rents are really high here for short term contracts . Our situation is pretty common - couldn't afford a down payment on our low salaries but luckily dh's father bought small flats for both his sons in the 70s when prices were low which we sold to buy our current flat (plus mortgage!) Lots of people have holiday homes too but not dh's family - oh well you can't have everything!

Looks like the young are being lied to. I am middle aged with a lot of equity, and it grates on me to hear journalists blithely state that "everyone in Europe rents," as if the younger generation is being "entitled" or cheeky to want what everyone who has gone before them has had.

We have sold out the young imho.

Surely the point that everyone keeps missing here is that many people are okay to rent on the continent because it's cheap to do so. Rent in many parts of the England is, in comparison, very expensive.

Jaybee - that's a huge generalization though. It's not cheap to rent in the continent - only in some areas.

Jaybee

As just pointed out, thats a huge generalization.

And what you seem to be "missing here" is the huge on costs of renting on the continent.

Jaybee We pay considerably more to rent on the continent than we do for our mortgage in the UK, and that is approaching £1500 per month. It is not cheap.

If we had the tenants rights they have in Germany, and rents were not insanely high, I would prefer to rent. I own my home. But renting here is a very poor deal for tenants.

brasty

So you'd be happy to pay the landlord a vast sum of money to redecorate the house when you leave. Or have to decorate a hovel on arrival , The owners only asked 4000 Euros when we left our house and were kind enough not to make us change any carpets or make us pay vast sums to repair the stairs and one door from dog scratches. These costs would not have been regulated or the same as fair wear and tear in the uk. Our rent was 2000 Euros a month btw. And that didn't cover the boiler servicing, buildings insurance etc.

You either rent a hovel over there and do it up. Or if it is really nice, you get stung for top to bottom redecoration and replacing/repairing items when you leave. This is another country, which doesn't seem to have the concept of fair wear and tear. And I think you forgot to talk about how you'd love legal liability for cleaning snow from the pavement outside you house in case someone slipped in the snow and how you'd relish cleaning the communal areas in your shared flats if it was your turn in kehrwoche. And how you'd be fine to be responsible for all hedge trimming and gutter cleaning.

You comment really is CHERRY PICKING the best bits of renting abroad. Notice periods are often long as a result of having these "wondedful" contracts, which "protect" the tenant. . In the U.K., you can literally walk out of fixed term contract with no notice. The one month notice period is actually unenforceable whereas the 2 months landlords give is protected by law. The eviction process is long and complicated. Not to mention costly. I agree, for some tenants, there is not enough protection and this could be addressed by having longer tenancy agreements as an option. But in order to do that, landlords would want to be able to access rents more easily in the case of non payment and be able to evict if the tenants were abusing the property.

From what I can see, renting abroad is treated much like owning your own home but with big brother (landlord) watching you - especially in Germany but without the best bit of owning it after paying out vast sums of money for years.

No system is perfect. However, personally until I had a school aged child, I'd much rather have had the uk flexibility. So we are not all so badly off in the U.K.

I lived in Germany and Italy and found that rent in Perugia was very affordable. I also had a fantastic landlady who had actually fought for me to stay in the property as the original family member who owned it passed away two weeks after I had signed the contract to rent it. I have a disability and face huge discrimination when I am trying to rent. The place even had stairs and the landlady did not bat an eyelash.

I have a visual impairment and find that many landlords don't want to rent to me if the place has stairs, fearing that I will fall.

I tried to find a place to rent in Germany but found no luck. I ended up living in a hotel owned by a horrible horrible woman who took advantage of me

I have a wonderful landlady in the UK. I am extremely fortunate to live in a good area and have a landlord who is both open minded and kind hearted. I do not have a UK guarantor and this has been another difficult hurdle in finding a place to rent in the UK.

So looks like in Europe they pay possibly lower rents on average then the UK but have higher fees when they leave but also they can stay put for longer so those fees don't come up as often?

I don't know where the cost of kitchens and boilers and chimney sweeps fits in compared to the UK with renters.

No of course I would not want to rent in that situation. But having a secure tenancy with a good landlord, is an attractive option. Especially when I get older and can no longer manage maintenance of my property.

We rent in Germany

We bought our own kitchen (from Ikea - prices comparable to the UK - as we wanted it sorted asap as we had a toddler and I was pregnant) but the landlord sorts the boiler and has previously refunded us for an inexpensive part DH bought for the heating system when his (the landlord's) handyman was on holiday and DH fixed something simple himself (I think it was just filters) - I don't think people replace boilers, they are part of the fabric of the house. We've lived in our house ten years, so I can't comment on being charged when moving as we never have... but landlords here tend to strongly prefer long term tenants, so people who stay less then a couple of years will have a less favourable experience, yes.

older In Belgium there are 3, 6 or 9 year contracts. You get stung if you leave before the tenancy end date if you have the 3 year one.

As a landlord in the UK, I pay for buildings insurance, boiler servicing, chimney sweeping, the gardener, maintenance etc. As a tenant in Belgium I pay rent, plus all of the aforementioned costs I incur as a UK landlord.

there is not stigma attached to renting in France and a few people rent all their life or most of their life until they buy or have built their family home. You have lots of right as a renter and it is affordable.

My parents rent a council house in the UK.Their rent is not low, but they have a secure tenancy and get maintenance done pretty quickly. I don't think there are many council houses in their area that have not been bought, so I guess that means maintenance gets done more quickly. When they had problems with some youths, a council officer visited them and helped resolve the problems. It is actually an ideal set up for older people. If they had bought their own house, I would have to be sorting out their maintenance and servicing as they can no longer do these things themselves.

The other one that confuses me is "In Germany they don't start school until 6!" Read that one time about 20 minutes after my (German) niece - who had not yet turned 3 - demonstrated correct pencil grip for me over Skype. They may not call it school but I'm pretty sure you don't learn correct pencil grip by running round a forest.

Won't most kids learn the pencil grip before school (like your niece)? They really don't go to school till 6 - kindergarten, which is from age 3 to 6, is more like preschool. I think the over-5s do about an hour a week of reading and writing a week, and the rest of it's playing and crafts.

I know in Switzerland German Cantons they don't start school till 7. But there is a big culture and lots of pressure on mums to do lots of craft activities and learning with children at home before 7. You can't just look at when they start formal school.

older

I don't think rents are that different comparing where dh and I lived in France (even when the exchange rate was 1.45 Euros to the pound). If anything we paid more to rent a house than we got renting out an equivalently valued house a similar distance from London as the house was from Paris because of the additional costs. We changed the kitchen it was so awful, I decorated loads and changed the bedroom carpets. The house was obviously larger than our house as you do get more for your money in France because houses are bigger due to land being in larger supply and therefore cheaper. (Think population density in the uk compares to France). Both were pretty big 4 beds in a non estate village location. We paid 2000 Euros and got £1300 before agency fees.

In Germany, the rent was also 2000 Euros and in Belgium, it was 2400 Euros. Both were worth a lot more than our house back in England in value terms and again were larger. So yes, you could argue a bit better value. Except we had to change carpets and stuff in all of the houses. If you start talking about HLM's in France, that may be different. The rents on these appartments are regulated. And they are flats, not houses with gardens. All we wanted was a decent sized garden and it simply wasn't possible for less than 2000 Euros in Germany. The only houses available building for less than this were massive terraced houses with postage stamp gardens about the size of the patch outside a one bed cluster home. Complete with bars on the windows. Otherwise dreadfully maintained housing with a garden, which would have been more than a bit of painting but a diy project. A nice doer upper. We were even taken to a house, which hadn't been cleaned since the corpse of the dead owner had been removed. It had lain there for days and grown maggots - that's for boak face.

And it is Not just higher exit fees. There are load of unpredictable on costs in some countries that the landlord pays for over here in the uk. The dishwasher breaks, you have to repair or replace it. And there is an obligation to leave a working dishwasher when you leave as it was working when you arrived. That sort of crap.

Mummy which part of Germany were you in? I've never been in a German house which even has carpets! Wooden or stone floors all the way. It's also rate to have a dishwasher that comes with the house unless you are on a very short term let, so I assume you must have been? Normally the landlord has nothing to do with your dishwasher as if you want one you buy your own - like the rest of the kitchen.

The only part of Germany where you'd pay that sort of rent for any kind of normal house is very close to Munich (on the Same Bahn or with very good overground rail connection) or the very fashionable area south of Munich around the lakes. I don't think a family house would cost over 1500€ anywhere else unless you expected something enormous.

I don't recognise some of these descriptions of the downsidesd of renting in Germany. I've lived here getting on for two decades and rented in various different places. If you take on a place undecorated by the previous tenants, you don't have to decorate when you leave. Even if they have decorated, there are laws about reasonable intervals - most rooms only have to be done every 5 years. Obviously you have to return it in the condition you got it in, but I would think that's a given. Boilers, electrics etc have always been the LL's responsibility wherever I've lived - the only things we have had to sort/pay for are what's known as 'trivial' repairs which means anything costing under about 75 €. It's only some areas of Germany that place the responsibility of street/hallway cleaning onto tenants - most places I've lived this has been included in the rent. And as a homeowner you are legally responsible for the bit of pavement outside your house.

There are national and regional tenants' associations which provide legal advice if you are a member and have a dispute with your LL and is also a powerful lobbying voice.

I have friends who could well afford to buy - the dh is highish up in a very secure professional job - and they aren't planning at all on moving, and yet they also choose to rent. They have a lovely house and a great LL. Others decided to buy but not without quite a few misgivings.

Mummy, 2000 €? You must have been in Munich. It's even possible in gentrified Berlin to get a beautiful flat with a huge (shared with one other naice tenant or sometimes individual) garden for 1400 €.

There's not even any actual need to pay 2000€ if you're working in Munich - if you actually want to live in the city, as in walking distance to everything, then of course you pay through the nose and it's very comparable to London. If you're prepared for the sort of commute that Londoners would consider very reasonable and acceptable you can live in a nice, safe, quiet, friendly area for comfortably under 1500€ - outside Munich it's only decent sized houses in the very fashionable areas chosen by those who want to be able to nip to the Alps to ski every weekend and near recreational lakes which would cost 2000€. I've heard ex pats moan about high rents but it's because they are incredibly demanding and wont consider any but a few very expensive areas.