To think that renters have put up with big monthly rises for years

[Upthebracket22]

We rent because we have been priced out of the housing market for years & years. We have raised our kids in a rented house & put up with large rises in monthly payments. We’ve been ‘lucky’ in that we’ve been on our current house for 10 years.

Noone has given a flying fuck about renters & the amount we pay & have had to find extra each year but now it’s mortgages going up, it’s all ‘poor mortgage holders’ - it’s really grating on me.

As it goes, the coming housing downturn will mean we actually might be able to buy a house. Safe secure affordable housing is a good thing.

the current housing boom has been created by cheap money and that era is ending. An entire generation of people have been priced out of a safe home & while I don’t want to people in difficulty, renters have had to put up with it for years ‘move to a cheaper area’ being the main nonsense.

We are a normal family with good jobs but saving for a deposit has been impossible because of insanely high rents.

i am tired of the ‘poor mortgage holder’ rhetoric when those of us trapped in rented homes have put up with large monthly hikes for years.

i know this won’t be a popular view on here but for us renters, the last decade had been difficult and no one has given a shit.

1. 1/2. Mum middle class, dad working class
2. No, not a penny
3. Nope. All state schools, some very average. Went to 8 different schools before Uni because we moved all the time.
4. Working class, not a penny, state school.
5. Yes. Worked whilst at Uni and have worked FT after that for 30 years. Only had 6 months off with first, 5 months with 2nd.
6. 2001
7. 16 years old although parents did help until I was 18. Rented for 13 years.
8. None official although really struggling since the menopause.

I can answer

• How much do you and your husband earn?
Low 6 figs, I'm p/t
• How many children do you have?

2
• How old are they ?
6 & 9, had them at 31 & 33.

• Do you consider yourself well travelled ?
ish, know Europe, America & Caribbean pretty well.
• Have you ever spent more than your annual salary on a car ?
Never spent more than 15%, always been 2nd hand
• Do you live in London ?
Yes

Do I pass the test? Regardless we couldn't have bought without help & I certainly wouldn't have been able to change careers & reduce my hours to fit around dc.

What qualifies as a good decision now may well turn into a bad one tomorrow due to circumstances outside an individual’s control. I also worked up a professional career path. Unfortunately politics and culture changed and it is no longer as financially rewarding as it was. I’ve left that profession now, despite it being my life’s dream. I made the ‘good decision’ of moving to a cheap region for housing and so had to find another line of work anyway. I’m in entry-level roles and at my age I doubt will go anywhere now. I am not happy about that. Did I make a good decision or a bad one? We won’t know until we know how much the houses are going to crash by in all the different regions will we?

The fact is that people from working class backgrounds do not get lots of amazing and fantastic opportunities which provide good options to choose from! We get shit, shit, or maybe a different colour of shit if we are lucky!

exactly, I was about to say there are so many people who can’t live with family after they finish university or school and for mental health reasons have to leave. Or they live in an area where they would struggle to find a decent paid job. It’s naive to think everyone can just spend their 20s in the family home.

my friend moved out her mums house at age 18 about 15 years ago. She was able to on a low wage buy her first flat with a £3,000 deposit. The money she would need now to buy something similar is far more than she can afford even though now she has a much better pair professional jobs.

Things have clearly gone wrong and I agree with the OP, you did get the odd article and news piece here and there about high rents but it was definitely not presented as something of national concern or with the same sense of urgency as the increasing mortgages have.

Nicola Sturgeon did the right thing a couple of months ago by freezing rents in Scotland and I think Scotland have did a freeze on the right to buy for quite a while so the social housing stock doesn’t keep disappearing.

@ParsleySageRosemary absolutely. That is the privilege that I have, lots of choices & the fact a safety net will insulate me somewhat from any bad decisions I might make.

yep, this. I moved to near Aylesbury for a few months to live with my cousin and paid a reduced rent compared to my previous east London rent. However the monthly train fare cost about £380 so I ended up being better off moving back to south London and having a short commuter time to my job in central london.

returned home fulltime at 27 to save to get married and build house at 31

So 4 years you got to save, which is what has given you a huge head start. You are very fortunate ti have had that available and, the benefit of an inheritance.

No I’m not answering questions, I’m not the one assuming everyone has had the same advantages and opportunities as me. I do not think life is just going to be all perfect and easy if I make the right choices. It’s such a stupid ignorant way to think. You have been given two huge opportunities that have enabled you to make choices and benefit financially in a way most people won’t ever have. It’s amazing you don’t understand this.

People who are renting have many options to better their circumstances or make sacrifices in order to achieve home ownership, if that is their goal.

Some people might have options. You’ve written this as a sweeping generalisation.

You won’t answer my questions but felt entirely with your rights to ask me to answer yours? Which I did . Honestly.
You had 4 kids by the time you were 25 didn’t you ? And now you wonder why you’ve been unable to buy a house ?

My husband had to stay at home this year while I took our two children away alone on holiday.

That's actually quite sad, I would hate that. Guess you should have made better choices...

It is very sad but it is what it is. I’m not on here complaining about my life though.

Thankfully we went to stay with my good friend in their apartment overlooking a lake in Austria. So not dreadful either.

And not everyone can afford to go away so I don’t feel particularly hard done by. As you said I made the decision to marry a farmer knowing what the future would be like. It’s not so much a bad decision as one which came with consequences. Which I am living with!

Toulet - you can twist what I say as much as you want. It won’t change the fact that the choices we make when we are young will shape the future we can provide for our future families. Are some people dealt a shit hand in life ? Without doubt they are. BUT no one can change their future except them. You can’t make decisions which make you struggle and then wonder why you’re struggling.

I wish that financial stuff was taught at school. My parents rented a council house until I was an adult and I had no idea about mortgages and buying houses. After leaving university I left rented student accommodation and rented a private house with my DH and buying a house didn’t cross our minds even though we had a decent disposable income (no DC!) as it just wasn’t something I’d been exposed to. I understand the struggles that renters have as we had to move multiple times and in our last rented place the landlord put the house up for sale, told us we could buy it but then sold to a relative at the last minute, leaving us with little notice to leave. This experience planted the idea of buying in our mind and as we had a mortgage in principle pushed us into making an offer on another (better) house, which we went on to buy. We didn’t have a house deposit saved but we had been planning to get married and have the standard wedding. We cancelled this and decided to have a very small wedding, and use the money as a deposit instead, we wouldn’t have been able to afford it otherwise. We bought when house prices and interest rates were at their peak at the time - if we’d bought a couple of years before then we’d have paid half what we did - so we had to stretch ourselves but banks were willing to lend more times your salary then. So I do wish we’d thought about it earlier but as young 20 somethings it wasn’t something that was on our radar - education in this area would have made a difference to us and I’m sure to others at that age. I know it’s much harder (almost impossible for many) nowadays though.

Thank you.

I think some people think it's a choice we made - it didn't feel like a choice. It was stay at home and face a tirade of abuse and have our mental health suffer or rent and be happy.

I think the reason that rents have risen so much in the last few years is because the government got involved in trying to save those in rented accommodation by penalising landlords. (I think it is to drive small landlords out of business so big businesses can corner the market and give renters long term contracts. Which sounds good in one light but when you start to think about it you can see the gaping holes in the plan)
I think when the ruling came in that landlords couldn’t put their mortgage interest against tax there was an article on the news and renters were rubbing their hands together with glee about how much this policy was going to cost their “evil” landlord.
All I could think was “Are you really that stupid” It was obvious that rents would skyrocket as the tax that couldn’t be recouped by the landlord would be passed on to the renter. And for those landlords who couldn’t or wouldn’t they would sell up and that would mean fewer rental properties. Or the properties would be turned into short term let’s where you can put the mortgage interest payments against tax.

You can only get the long term cheaper rents if governments work with landlords But as I said, I think they are more interested in squeezing landlords out in favour of big businesses and whilst they do that the renter I will see higher and higher rents because there are fewer and fewer properties.

Governments say they want to drive out the slum landlords who charge hundreds per month for little more than a shed.
But their legislation only applies to those landlords who want to go things properly.
For the rest it is ignored as they make larger and larger profits as people get more and more desperate to keep a roof over their heads

The reason rents have gone up in the last few years was because every time new legislation came in to penalise the landlord The landlord passed those costs onto the tenant. Add to this that some landlords have decided to not continue with longer term rentals and sold and some because they can earn more with less regulations and mortgage interest that they can use against tax have gone down the short term/holiday let route
So there are fewer rental properties so demand outstrips supply so rents increase

One thing that goes in favour of people who rent as opposed to people who have bought is the fact if you lose your income renters are more protected and can claim benefits to pay the rent.
People with a mortgage are on their own.

I know a few people who have been in your position.

One family with 2 children, one with one child and a single mum with a small child

They bought what they could afford (which were 1 bed flats) and moved the family in.

Child/Children had the bedroom Mum and dad had a sofa bed in the living room. They sold up virtually everything they owned in order to fit into a 1 bedder, Single mum fried bought a studio flat.

The difference between the rent they were paying and their mortgage was substantial which meant they could save for a larger deposit. The flat they were in was going up in value as well.
All of them bought houses with enough bedrooms within 3 years.

The flats were garden flats and they both added a fully insulated and heated cabin as extra space

I am unsure why you need a 6 figure deposit. Surely you would buy in an area that you could afford. I know you don’t want to be told to move to a cheaper area but if you can’t afford where you want then you will always be renting.

Dd bought her first place for 4 figures about 3.5 years ago. It wasn’t what she wanted to live in and it was tiny and needed a lot of work doing to it
She was about to sell when the pandemic hit so she rented it out. It is still rented out
The amount the flat is worth now far outstrips what she could have ever saved. Her friends thought she was mad

Trying to save whilst paying rent and having children is almost impossible

Sometimes you have to think outside the box because the box isn’t working for your circumstances.

Some LL have been good other not as always it depends.

I know quite a few friend who as interest rates have gone up their rent has increased by more than the raise almost immediately, at the same time it’s possible that they are on tracker mortgages but I doubt that all of them are.

Also some of the houses which are up for rent near us in the past 3 years have gone from £525 a month to wanting £800 a month, and because of this other have had their rent increased to the ‘average’ of the area.

It’s the Wild West for renters with very little protection

On the other hand, renting is a business, however, because the market is saturated with amateur renters the properties aren't up to scratch. I also feel the mortgage lending requirements are far too strict.
We had a choice of overburdening ourselves with a large mortgage or buying a smaller property that needs extensive work, We chose the latter. It means no we don't have our dream home, but we'll always be able to afford our mortgage payments. We can have fun with our lives.