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.

@contentedsoul not sure if you noticed but if it weren’t for landlords a lot of people wouldn’t have anywhere to live or would be obliged to take on huge levels of debt and risk in order to be able to live somewhere. If anything, you’re being greedy by choosing not to give a family somewhere to live.

I am tired of hearing the same old pathetic excuses from landlords.

“There will always be people who don’t want to or can’t afford to buy” - you are not doing it out of the goodness of your heart and you are not acting philanthropically. There are many more in the 2nd category because private landlords have artificially increased demand on restricted supply thereby pushing prices up.

We used to have more social housing once, which re-cycled the money spent on rent into the public purse instead of a few rich peoples’ pockets. The damned same old tired excuses are just plain insulting to people’s basic common sense, adding insult to injury to those of us who've been abandoned to private renting. Like all the privatisation experiments, all it adds up to is private profit for the few, public debt for the many.

Agree with Xenia on the longterm view.

Even in the shorter term in the area I currently live, it would cost almost three times as much to rent my property as I currently pay monthly on my mortgage.

I do not find your last facetious sentence claiming people are being greedy by not being landlords at all amusing @Reginabambina. This is the life work and earning of tenants that you are taking away from them. It is not a subject to laugh at.

@xenia because you haven’t factored in the wealth you haven’t made because you’ve let your money sit stagnant. Most people can make a lot of money given a little bit of capital and a fair amount of effort. Everything we do has a hidden opportunity cost. When you’re buying a £3 coffee on your credit card it’s relatively small but when you’re servicing hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of debt you suddenly loose a lot of opportunities.

@ExEUCitizen really? Oh, well I’ll go a tell my landlord that they should sell my flat so that I’m forced to taken On a few hundred thousand pounds worth of debt and sell all of my assets to give to the bank for a deposit just so that I can have somewhere to live. Greedy bastards!

Renting gives you more flexibility and for many buying is not an option. But in the long term it can be a more expensive option and you have less security and your bound by contracts..

Totally agree with you OP
We rent and love it. Used to own!

@Regina

That's just bollocks

You are simply trying to justify the fact that you would prefer someone else's lives to suffer - if it means you yourself can have more.

A shocking insight into the minds of 2020

There's no point in arguing. Money or the greed for more money is the most vile trait of human nature. Humans are happy to see others suffer...so long as they themselves have more.

The BTL market is truly grotesque in the UK

How these parasites can sleep makes me think they are bereft of morals and principles...instead they are consumed by the lust of more and more....never is enough just enough.

They want more, regardless of the absolute misery they bring into peoples lives.

I don't have the time of day for anyone that thinks their life is enough justification to make others suffer.

Repulsive

The only problem I have with private renting is that you're not 'throwing money down the drain' per se, you're paying off someone else's mortgage, when theoretically you could be paying off your own. Provided you were able to obviously.

If you are not settled whether its in your relationship or your job then it's wise to rent short term
I always wanted to be financially independent. I live alone which is liberating for me after 2 failed marriages. So i worked and saved hard and had my mortgage paid off by 50.
Its not so important when you're younger but its inevitable we will get old (if we're lucky) and not having the financial burden of rent to pay each month in your latter years means more money available to enjoy your life

If all landlords sold up, or alternatively if the rush for buy-to-lets hadn't happened, we'd be in a much better situation. Do you not remember when you could buy a starter 2x2 house for not much more than double an annual wage in cheaper areas? I do. What makes it worse is that landlords began by targeting the low end of the market too. Almost entire estates of what would once have been 2x2 starter homes are now buy-to-let. That sort of demand on supply has a massive effect.

Honestly I don't think owning a home will mean that you are definitely leaving money behind for family soon. I think at some point, the government is going to pass some law quietly to allow them to get the majority of it for some reason. They already are for care costs in a lot of cases.

I still bought one though. It made better financial sense, plus I was starting to get annoyed at funding a landlords lifestyle. It's a bit depressing renting from someone who whines about having 4/5 homes to rent and then talks about their boat, their multiple holidays, horses etc. Yeah I feel real sorry for you right now.

Genuine question; if we didn’t have private landlords, where would people go who don’t qualify for social housing? There’s literally hundreds of families on waiting lists for SH. I’ve been in rented for years in private rentals, only recently got onto the property ladder mainly due to the fact I worry about what will happen when I retire. Do people think private landlords shouldn’t profit by renting out, and if that’s the case, why the hell would anyone actually choose to be a landlord? In the North you can get a private 2 bedroomed rental for £500 - hardly going to allow the landlord to lead a life of luxury. They’re providing a service the same as any other self employed trades person.

If I lived in a country with robust tenant rights, a stable housing market and a stable population I’d consider renting. In the UK (or London, anyway), no.

Id never look "down" on anyone because they dont own their home but purely from a financial POV, if you had the opportunity to own and didnt, I really dont understand that at all. For the following reasons:

1. Where I live, mortgages are less expensive per month than rent. So, for a 3 bed house here, an average mortgage would be around £800 a month whilst renting such a property would be £1300 a month- so by renting youre spending £500 more a month - thats 6k a year.

1. Again, where I live, house prices always rise- even in a recession. Prices go up on average, about 100k every 10 years. This means just by owning, you are making 100k every decade.

1. I know people who rent and they have been asked to move about 5 times in the last 4 years because the LL have decided to sell or to do something else with the property. I couldn't bear settling into a home and then having to move out yet again 6 months or a year later.

1. I dont want to have to ask permission to change features of my house or to decorate in the ways that I want.

All the above will depend on your location of course, but for me- these are the reasons that renting doesnt make financial sense where I live.

I often wonder if we should have bothered buying or just rented long term and invested our money in other ways. Friends of ours rent a 5 bed detached their rent is lower than my mortgage, they live in a decent area, they have no costs of maintaining a property, they’ve been in it for 14 years. In that time they have saved hard (both have good jobs) and invested well in the stock market. They have enough to buy a house outright now.
Meantime we pay more than them on our mortgage, seem to constantly be spending on the house, maintenance decorating etc and struggle to save.

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

I think this is the main reason anyone buys one! Who wants to be paying big rent when you're on a pension?

In some countries it is quite common for people (even couples on good wages) to rent for a long time. But maybe the difference in rent and mortgage payments is different.

Interesting article I was reading a few weeks ago, managed to find it again.

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-7917693/MELANIE-McDONAGH-laments-renting-50s.html

We're renting - even though we have saved a deposit big enough to buy a nice house.

we like the flexibility - we know we will want to move house in a few years.

However, renting is expensive where we live. Though it's cheaper than buying a house and then selling (due to all the associated fees of buying/selling).

My family think we're stupid. None of them are in the position to be able to buy a house, but they can't understand why, if we were in that position, why we wouldn't buy.

There's definitely a stigma attached to renting - some people (not close friends) judge me when I say we're renting - especially the older generation (late 30s/40s).

We're not too worried about still not owning a house when we're pensioners - Firstly, we will be given a house/large chunk of money when pil die, IF it's not spent of care fees. Secondly, - after a few years, when we've eventually worked out where we want to be, we will get a morgage. We're just not in a hurry!

Genuine question; if we didn’t have private landlords, where would people go who don’t qualify for social housing? There’s literally hundreds of families on waiting lists for SH. I’ve been in rented for years in private rentals, only recently got onto the property ladder mainly due to the fact I worry about what will happen when I retire. Do people think private landlords shouldn’t profit by renting out, and if that’s the case, why the hell would anyone actually choose to be a landlord? In the North you can get a private 2 bedroomed rental for £500 - hardly going to allow the landlord to lead a life of luxury. They’re providing a service the same as any other self employed trades person.

1. The property market is demand and supply. Without landlords buying properties the demand would be less and therefore the property would be cheaper and therefore people who now can't afford to buy could
2. For people who can't afford to buy there should be proper, stable long term leases where people as sitting tenants have a right to live in their property for a reasonable term
3. There is a need for private landlords but over the last few years it has got very out of hand and started to take us back towards the historical landowning classes.

In terms of the £500, not a life of luxury no. But if the place cost 100k that is 6k a year. 6% is more than it would get sitting in the bank. Plus potential capital gain from prices rising long term.

What happens when you retire?

@ExEUCitizen I’m 25. Housing costs have been over inflated for all of my living memory. Coincidentally they aren’t over inflated as a result of rentals, rentals existed in the era you describe too. Overinflation in the housing market is a result of government policies, both local and national, designed to increase house costs including not charging CGT on main residences, NIMBYism, help to buy etc etc. The above has been blamed on the proliferation of hone ownership by many political commentators.

@contentedsoul thou doth protest too much.

My sister rents a tiny basement flat in London where she has been for the last 19 years.She is now in her mid 50’s. If her landlady decides to sell up, my sister will be homeless. She can’t save enough for deposit in London. It’s really scary.
Dad’s house is rented out to supplement care home fees but all the money is gone now and the house will have to be sold to keep up the payments.I feel so sorry for the family in there, although this was always made clear to them that this would happen at some point. Renting is so precarious unless you have a council or HA place.