To think renting as opposed to buying is not throwing your money away ?

[Usemyname123]

I am a single 29 year old and do not own a home. I have been told that renting is essentially 'throwing money down the drain' and other words to that effect.
I admire those who are able to save for a deposit as I have a hard time doing so. I think it will take me several years, and I'm single so will potentially be buying something alone.
I think owning a house and being able to have your mortgage paid off so that you can live rent-free in retirement age is the main reason I would buy one.
But sometimes I feel, especially in the UK, that there is this thing about buying a home in order to be complete and fulfilled in life, along with getting married.
I think renting shouldn't have a stigma attached to it, not everybody wants the financial commitment of a house. Personally, I like the fact that I have the freedom to move elsewhere, or that my landlord is responsible for paying for a new washing machine etc.
I don't think that 'just' renting should be seen as some sort of failure, and should be a more celebrated choice as it has many advantages.
However I can also fully understand wanting to purchase a house. It must be a great feeling to know that you are the owner.
Interested to hear others' thoughts.

I would do anything in my power to buy. Rents are massively inflated and deposits are horrendous. They can make you homeless at any time. My son hates it. His landlord chucked him out because he complained about the mould. Him and his wife pay £1k a month for a depressing one bed flat in Surrey.
I rented for the first time ever 6 months ago while I was moving to another county and paid a fortune for a shit hole.
I'm now in my own home again thank God.
You are basically paying someone else's mortgage for them so they can have a comfortable retirement.

I can be ‘money down the drain’ in some circumstances.

If you are paying high rent to live in a desirable area, or have a bigger/posher house than you really need, when you could live somewhere perfectly ok but a lot cheaper, and put the difference into saving for a deposit.

There are several couples at my kids’ school who are renting big houses in prestigious roads for £3000 per month, with so many rooms they are never used. They could rent a house to fit them all in a still lovely road for £1400, and bank £1600 per month. They claim not to be able to buy as their deposit is too small, but actually if they reduced rent outgoings for a few years they could buy a decent family home. They’ve got used to living a lifestyle way above what they could afford to buy. It worries me what will happen if the sole covering all that rent loses their job. Make hay while the sun shines and save money while it’s not in short supply 🤷‍♀️

@chocolateteapot20 - so much truth in your post!

I own, but I bought in 1982. It was still a massive struggle, and I would never have bothered if secure tenancies had been available. Now we're both nearing retirement age, the house needs so much spending on it that getting it straight will clear almost all our savings and we want to move away from the busy south-east.

Thankfully, we've paid off the mortgage so hope that such a move will leave us with some capital but my god, the hassle and the expense of buying and selling (stamp duty alone is £10k, even on a very modest house like ours).

I sometimes wish we were still renting, and could just find another place and give notice on this one.

If you actually do the maths buying with a mortgage is probably one of the stupidest financial decisions a person could make.

I'd be interested to see these maths please

*sole earner

There are many permutations on how successful home ownership can be. I remember the huge housing crash many years ago. I was a sixth former and it was in the 1980’s, lots of repossessions. I remember having a Saturday job and a women I worked with was thrilled as she was going to buy a repossession cheaply and remember thinking how she was doing well out of someone’s misery.

We bought at a good time in 1999 within two years house prices had doubled in our area. If any kind of crash ever happens in our lifetime as the value of our house has gone up by about 150% it would have to be a big one.

Personally it is retirement or ill health that would worry me, whatever is the current welfare state provision can change. Look at child benefit it was a universal benefit and now it isn’t. Child tax credits had a time when 60k was the upper limit for claims it’s threshold is now around 16k and changed to universal credit. Having a welfare state is wonderful, in my Fathers home country nothing like this exists but I would rather not be at their mercy. This was instilled in me as a child. Family circumstances, health, intelligence, opportunity, hard work, luck and many other aspects influence our decision making consciously and subconsciously Getting my own home was always my top priority, more than marriage or having children. Though a decent partnership is in very practical terms a sound economic decision.

Plenty of people are happy renting. I have been looking at ancestors and most of mine did not own a property and they brought up families and hd good lives. Some seem to have moved every single year with 8 children (may be they were doing moonlight flits to avoid rent!) or perhaps they just liked a change. Others who rented were in the same house for years.

I certainly wanted to buy and did before our first child came - that is what my parents did - in fact put off babies for 8 years so they had 2 professional salaries coming and bought before I arrived. We did that too - I call it buying before you breed so you have 2 full time wages before any children and can buy in that position.

I also like the security of my own freehold place and after 30 years have now paid off the mortgage so for the next 20 or 30 years (if I live that long) I will have no mortgage now nor rent.

My older 3 chidlren have bought - in fact one exchanged last week on a house and my student twins now own their older brother's last house as of last year which they let out so they are both tenants at university and landlords elsewhere. They are very lucky to be in that position of course.

However I don't think anyone should say there is a stigma on renting. Tenants don't have to pay to replace boilers, do works and all sorts. If a tree comes down today across their property they won't have to pay for it. There are lots of pros and cons.

You need a roof over your head therefore not throwing money away. Throwing money at having a roof over your head.

www.economist.com/britain/2014/03/22/not-on-your-bike
This is a more recent article on geographical mobility slowing. As I said, it seems to be something in the realms of academia and high-government stats more than regular news. Causes are complex, in the past recession has been blamed, but the dysfunctional housing market is mentioned. If anyone's interested in chasing it up it looks like 'internal migration' and 'within-UK migration' are alternative search terms. Sorry for the addition, but it is counter-intuitive and therefore interesting to me!

If you actually do the maths buying with a mortgage is probably one of the stupidest financial decisions a person could make.

I'd be interested to see these maths please

Me too. Between buying our first house and our second, we made several hundred thousand pounds, in four years. I know it’s not the point (a secure roof over your head is) but you can’t argue with those maths. We made vastly more in equity than we paid in interest!

I think renting can be right in a lot of situations.

However we completed on a house this week. The mortgage payments on a 3 bed end of terrace with a lovely garden in a desirable village are less than the rent we've been paying on a tiny one bed flat in a crappy council block (privately rented). If we were to rent a house with even one more bed it would cost at least £200 more per month. We want to have children and this is the best way for us to afford the space and location.

I'd hate to rent at this stage of my life mainly as so insecure. Friend of mine with 2 kids has had to move 3 times in last 3 years due LL selling. The stress of it all really taking its toll on everyone I'd just hate the insecurity of it.

I rent but am fortunate to have gotten a HA property with fair rents, security and repairs done quickly. I have opened a help to buy isa and am slowly putting what I can afford into it but it’s not much between childcare and other living expenses but to be totally honest I am not in any rush to buy. I have a friend who has friends who are so judgy that I don’t own, all the comments why don’t I just buy and I could do it if I just ate beans on toast and had no enjoyment In my life but they don’t mention they got a big help off their parents 🙄 but it really makes me feel like rubbish to be honest when I am perfectly happy with my home at the moment

Also OP re comparisons between the UK and other countries in respect of home ownership. I'm a dual citizen and lived in other countries, I have family living outside the UK too. It is not comparable unless you know exactly what their pension and welfarw systems are and how much people living there should/need to save up if they are not property owners. You also need to factor in differences in the cost of renting, salaries, type of properties available etc. It's far more complex than just saying "So many people in country X rent, whereas Britain is obsessed with home ownership". For the record, whilst no doubt there are places with less attractive pension system and social welfare in the world, Britain certainly isn't the best one either, despite what some might tell you.

Me and my dh rent and have done for the last 10 years - in Dublin, Canada & now London! We’ve been saving like crazy the last few years and still need another year of saving to get a decent deposit - what are you supposed to do if you can’t live with your parent or something to save - you’ve no choice but to rent and keep trying to save - I hate oeie saying oh your throwing your money away - I don’t agree I live in a beautiful top floor apartment in a lovely area that I could never afford to buy - so am enjoying the time I am here before I buy my house when i finally do get deposit together

I don't think it is throwing money away, and there shouldn't be a stigma attached as so many of the "homeowners" are only there because they got a healthy handout.

But.... Paying off a mortgage means you are slowly buying an asset as well as paying for a roof over your head. And unfair as it may be it is often cheaper to pay mortgage repayments than to rent. So for less than the cost of renting you are accumulating wealth too.

I don't think anyone should feel lesser if they can't or don't want to buy. I couldn't give a monkeys whether anyone owns or rents their home. In fact I would have no idea whether my friends own or rent (save those who have told me themselves!).

But I think people aspire to buy because it is generally the substantially more secure option in the long term.

"If you become I'll it's better to be a home owner than a renter."

"Not always. I was diagnosed as ptsd after my divorce. Leading up to that my depression and anxiety meant I had to take some time off work. The only way I could get help with my payments was a loan.

My exh rented, was self employed and got help towards his rent. He thinks UC is great."

If you own your home (ie mortgage paid off) you have no payments to make. If you rent for life and become ill you will always have rent to pay. Also if you buy a house and take out critical illness cover and become too ill to work, your house is paid off.

If you're happy paying someone else's mortgage by renting, that's your choice.

We did everything we could to buy because renting is so much more expensive.

Our mortgage is £300 per month. To rent would be about £700 per month.

I rent and I despise it. My eldest is 14 and she’s lived in 11 houses due to being turfed out when LL’s want to sell.
I can’t afford to save for a deposit, my current rent is £1250 a month.
If only mortgage providers would look at rental history instead of a deposit (or as well as a much smaller deposit) then it would be possible for more people to own their own home. In my case, they would see 15 years worth of rent paid in full and on time, so that is surely a good indication that I would never miss a mortgage payment!
I really worry about the future, and how I will afford to pay rent on a pension.

I love renting when I first finished university, the freedom to move with just a months notice, not having to worry about the cost if something like the boiler broke- I didn't see it as a waste of money at all because it gave me somewhere to live, often in places I would no way be able to afford to ever buy in. Now though I have a job I really enjoy and see myself staying in, DS, and I'm pretty sure I always want to live in the area owning has been a real privelledge, and for me it doesn't hold the same risk of being asked to leave at any point at the landlords whim; alone this wasn't an issue, but with school etc to think about it would be a huge upheaval. If long term rentals were guaranteed though and some control on prices then I would not have been as bothered about buying. I grew up in social housing and so owning a house hasn't been seen as a 'norm' to me, I'm just very fortunate to have had the opportunity.

I spent half my life in rental, the other half in a mortgaged property.

Never has anyone ever looked down at me because I was a tenant, I have never met that stigma people keep talking about. Some tenants have a massive chip on their shoulder, never seen that in the real world, and I mean in this country.

Make choices based on your own life and priorities.

Let's be realistic, once you calculate how much you spend on legal fee, move, maintenance, tax, buying a property is not that cheap and even less when the market goes down.

My personal preference is to buy to have some kind of pension to live on in the future, but that's just a preference.

I think there are definately pro and con in renting and owning. But there is definately a vibe that you need to work on towards buying a house. I don't like that.

Has the op even been back to this?

I moved in with my parents to save up for a deposit. It would have been extremely difficult doing it any other way. I appreciate not every one can/wants do this

It was a priority for me as I witnessed an Aunt lose it all after being fucked over by her long term partner.