AIBU to think *some* people look down on renters at my age?

[hugocat]

So, a little background, my partner and I are both divorced , he's 50, I'm 40. He earns 35 k, I earn 17k , we have 3 children under 16 between us. We live in a 'nice' area of town ( not south east ) and pay £1000 p/m with council tax in a 4 bed privately rented detached. It isn't done out all fancy with new kitchen, bathroom, big garden etc but we keep it very neat, clean and tidy and we love it there. We both don't have the best credit scores nor a deposit saved. I have some debt I am paying out and we've bought a joint car on hp.

Anyway, I know I shouldn't care but I got chatting to a busy body neighbour the other day and she asked if we were the owners of the house who had moved back into the property. I told her we weren't .. she was asking loads of questions which are none of her business so I politely ended the conversation. It got me thinking, do the homeowners in our area look down on us? Do they in general when they hear of people our age renting? Then I wonder what I'll do for retirement? I did own my own home in my twenties with my ex husband but the relationship was toxic and life moves on....

When it comes to older people private renting I tend to assume they must have previously been owners but had had to sell due to divorce or business failure / bankruptcy - simply because it used to be so relatively easy and affordable to buy that I can’t imagine they’d have chosen not to or been unable to afford it. With people under 40 I don’t even really question it - renting is just the norm here in London unless you’re a high earner and / or have inherited or been gifted deposit money.

Retired people who rent are entitled to housing benefit just like anybody else with a low or no income - and there’s no cap or bedroom tax if you’re over 65. Plus sheltered social housing is much easier to access than general needs.

Loads of reasons why my parents and inlaws didn't buy their council properties , but there were a few people around dads council estate that were the same. It might feel weird to say a home only cost 4K or whatever it was back then (!) but it was still a heck of a lot of money for them and even in those days people had to have help from family to buy anything , from what I could gather. Plus banks made it really hard to get any credit or a mortgage as well : it was a case of seeing the bank manager in person!

My dad had the opinion only ' rich ' people bought houses but then he was very risk adverse to most things. He just didn't want to look into moving out etc.
I feel sorry for the people renting who had no help at all with COVID and the lockdown. I know a mortgage ' holiday' isn't perfect but it's something. Most people renting I know had nothing or nasty LL's who just wanted the rent no matter what.

Forget buying at this point. Save for retirement

£1000 rent is an eye watering amount to pay each month but if you are having to pay that amount I can understand how you can't afford to save for a deposit, it's a vicious circle really. You absolutely would expect you should be able to buy your own home on that kind of joint income but clearly with house and rental prices so high I understand why it's so difficult.

@Leaannb

Forget buying at this point. Save for retirement

People that save for retirement are the ones that then won't qualify for any or as much help with rent when it comes to retirement. Those that haven't saved or saved towards private pensions will get most if not all of their rent costs paid in retirement.

£1000 rent is an eye watering amount to pay each month

But, sadly, also very normal in many parts of the UK. You are not going to get a two-bed home for less in a lot of places. In two of the (not London) cities I've lived in, one-bed studio flats are often not far short of that amount.

Some peopel
Look down on others for any crazy reasons
It’s their problems

@BarbedBloom

We have found this actually as we are almost 40. We just can't get the deposit together to buy. I was married before, we split up and had to sell when we were in negative equity. Me and new DH started saving, but then I was diagnosed with a chronic condition that has signifcantly affected my energy and mobility. I have to work part time, I really can't manage more than 15 hours a week now and even then I spend my evenings in bed. DH earns minimum wage, he has a degree but there just aren't any opportunities here. We can't afford to relocate either as you need so much money upfront. I was the higher wage earner by far.

Friends have all bought due to inheritances or from help from their parents. I am not saying this is the case for everyone, but they can't seem to understand that rent is over half our income alone. This is for a rundown one bed in a bad area. Rooms alone aren't that much cheaper to be honest and don't tend to take couples. We don't have expensive phones, don't buy coffees etc, don't go on holiday. My husband walks to and from work, almost an hour each way and takes leftovers for lunch. I am sure there are others in a similar situation, but as soon as you say you rent, some people do give you a certain look I have come to recognise.

We are simply trapped in the low wages, high rent trap and now that required deposit has gone up, can't see us ever managing it. Neither of us expect inheritances.

I feel for you

@SarahAndQuack

People definitely do. We rent, and when we first moved into our current house a neighbour commented how relieved she was to see someone had bought our house because it had been rented for ages and no one was looking after it. We'd put a pot plant outside the door, so she assumed we must not be renting.

I agree a lot of people will say 'ooh, I wouldn't want the responsibility' or whatever, when what they mean is 'I haven't a hope in hell of buying'.

A relative of one of my friends, who is very Tory inner circle, was shocked we were doing DIY 'on a rented house?!' I didn't want to say 'yes, because the LL won't, we can't afford better, and the paper is literally peeling off the wall so we need to put it back'. So I a nice bright 'yes, of course!' And then kicked myself as she's doubtless gone off thinking this is why feckless renters never manage to save a deposit.

OMG your neighbour is a snob thinking you owned the house because you put a plant pot outside the door!! I must be the perfect tenant as I keep the front and back gardens lovely , even planted new flowers and done 6 pots with lavender , geraniums and more plus clean loads!

Definitely. We originally were renting our house because we'd just moved in together, I had kids, it's a lower risk longer term. We found the neighbours opposite to be quite stand offish. We left it like that. The landlord was crap with finances and forced to sell at the time we were saving for a place. It is smaller than we ideally wanted but we got it with no quibbling on price. Neighbours over the road around 6 months later were chatting to our neighbours (to one side) who we've always been chatty with. I say hi and neighbour over road suddenly asks why our landlord never sold up (apparently they had booked a viewing and were just told things had changed when the viewing was cancelled) obviously a bit nosey but side neighbour says "you bought it didn't you?" Then goes on to saying how nice it was we decided to stay. Opposite neighbour looked like a cats arse trying to process that as I nod along and thank side neighbour for the compliment. And now ... now they are nice as pie to us. We haven't changed how we park/ do anything/ the house. Suddenly she thinks we're her sort after all. Funnily enough we are ok.with the distance. Weird woman.
I also noticed a handful of women at playgroup become friendlier towards me when they overheard me talking about buying with playworker.

All very odd. Weirdly husband already owns a place in a very out of the way part of the country that he inherited and wants to retire to, but it's no good for work now. So he rents it to a blacksmith friend. I suspect neighbour over the road would be absolutely astounded by this, not that we are telling her!
You just can't leap to conclusions about the friendliness or reluabilty of a person by their house so it's all to do with financial snobbery and the UK seemingly scared of those they perceive to be less well off. Hysterical.

@hugocat - I know, I found it funny and to be fair, she was mortified when she realised we were renting. I think she has had, shall we say, a fairly sheltered life!

We definitely found it so when we moved out of our London flat (owned, and we held onto it and let it) to a village in the Midlands, where we rented a four-bedroom house, because the move was purely for a job, and we didn't know the area and didn't have much time to look around. We were alternately amused and irritated when people said 'Oh you're the people living in the rented house on X Road?' and looked totally baffled, because we appeared too prosperous to be renting in our 40s to them. The bafflement grew after they realised what DH did for a living (high-profile job in sports in the nearby city) and what I did when I went back to work after maternity leave.

We did in fact buy the house after three years when the landlord put it on the market, which seemed to reassure people. We didn't end up staying long, though. It was an incredibly insular, small-minded, socially-conscious place, which I should have realised from the fact that renting was viewed as some kind of strange downmarket anomaly.

I think that as some pps have said, it's snobbery, internalised class anxiety based on property ownership, a feeling that renters will move on and aren't worth getting to know, and an obsession with the external appearance of the street/neighbourhood which renters are assumed to be liable to let down.

There's also a strong element of unthinking received ideas about where someone 'should be' at a certain life stage, akin to what someone (Thatcher?) said about a man travelling by bus after the age of 26 counting himself a failure?

Oh definitely! I am a single parent with a messy front garden and i was once given a letter to give ti my landlord. Just a lazy assumption i could not own the house. They had me filed under {sniff} renterrrrr (hyacinth bouquet voice)

I am a single parent with a messy front garden

That is a crime way worse than murder to a certain kind of mindset. (The garden, I mean. Though it's possible that type of person thinks that single parents are the type to commit the awful crime of not mowing to a quarter of a millimetre twice weekly.)

I used to wonder when I first moved to the UK why people spent so much time mowing their lawns and washing their cars. Actually, I still don't get it, but I'm assuming that people internalise the judgement of neighbours as all-important?

Wait til they see my next trick. Im going to have it concreted over and throw a few pebbles down. Threes are toast. The shrubs and bushes are toast!

I"ll blame "the landlord" 🍷🤣
She was lazy. No green fingers.

@WinnieLowCo

Wait til they see my next trick. Im going to have it concreted over and throw a few pebbles down. Threes are toast. The shrubs and bushes are toast!

I"ll blame "the landlord" 🍷🤣
She was lazy. No green fingers.

Great idea! I might think up some new ideas too! My car is 61 reg fiesta, is that good enough? 😂