Question for homeowners - do you look down on or judge your neighbours that rent?

[Sophiehoney]

I've always been a renter, for reasons not relevant to the question
I live in a large three bed house in a nice area, everyone around me owns, as do most people in the street.
I've noticed since moving in that all the neighbours who own talk to each other and my nice owner NDN said that as soon as she moved in, everyone was so nice and welcomed her to the street, I've noticed they will always stop and talk to her by their cars.
If I say hello or I wave good morning, I get ignored or I get a grunt or hurried answer. I've never made any noise, been anti social in any way, or had enough of a conversation with anyone to have possibly upset then!

I've also seen things online that made me 😮 someone complaining about someone taking up an on-street parking space - "he rents! Everyone else here owns!" as if owning your house makes you more entitled to the road next to it.
I also saw a thread on Facebook about bad neighbours and someone said "never buy anywhere near a rental property, tenants don't care about their homes or their neighbours" and loads agreeing with her. The OP hadn't even specified if the disruptive neighbours were owners or renters!

I've also had a block management company refuse to give me an access code to a side gate in the flat I live in even after I proved I was a resident because "someone keeps letting people into the building who shouldn't be here so we're only giving the code to owners'.

So I'm wondering if this is a common theme - be honest, please. Do you look down on renters? Do you judge? Think they are going to be trouble? Think they have less right to be there?

Just FWIW, I'm a working professional, I'm clean, tidy, considerate, friendly, and I pay more in rent than a lot of people pay for their mortgage, and all the same bills the owners do.

I think with the size of some people’s mortgages versus equity, it can be! Some people are just 2-3 months away from foreclosure which is about the same level
of insecurity as a renter.

Obviously, I’m being a bit obtuse as I do think if you can afford to buy, then it’s a better option. But I’ve always bought within my means and not over-extended myself.

I think anyone who looks down on a renter is just a snob. People’s life choices are entirely their business!

I honestly couldn't care less if someone rented, often people do it by choice. I was just saying that ime they don't tend to look after the outside of their properties very well (hopefully the inside is better!)

I live next to a rented property and I hope - come across as friendly and welcoming - that being said it’s a constant revolving door of tenants and I often wonder why I bother - they stay a year or two and that’s it. And no the property isn’t looked after and the front garden is a state which I’m going to have to tidy….(and that’s been the same for every tenant who has lived there in 12 years - not a single one looked after the front or rear garden)

@SlightlyTooMuch I think we may have lived in the same village! Introduced myself to
our neighbours, she said “We don’t speak to tenants” and shut the door in my face. Neighbours the other side said “Yes, she’s not a nice person” but we got a similar vibe from others.

No. I live in a 'naice' 🙄 area too, and some homeowners don't care for their property or garden. Not just renters!

That's horrendous behaviour.
If I don't like my neighbours it's because of behaviour etc.not being a homeowner doesn't make someone a lesser person.
I'm council tenant.

Of course not. I do feel sorry for them though. Rents are outrageous.

I don't judge the tenants from next door but I don't make much effort to get to know them, as they never stay more than a year or so

I don't look down on renters. I was one for long enough.

However, as an owner (in hock to the bank) I've found that in the main, because they don't own they're less invested in being neighbourly. By that I mean looking after the communal area or making noise.

It could be coincidence of course and that they'd be pain in the arse owners too. To be fair, our best neighbour was a renter. He worked nights and we rarely saw or heard him.

Oh that's sad. Here most places are meticulous, ours is average but unfortunately the rented ones are dire. They really stand out.

I'm a renter myself, I choose to rent. Have had some lovely places over the years, have always been responsible, have always put 'extra' into the properties even though they weren't my own...recarpeting, repainting, doing the garden etc. at my own cost, but I've always rented places where tenants can use the place as their own.

I think us long-term renters are often confused with careless tenants/students/young people who trash a place and then move on, and that gives renting a bad name.

Sometimes people ask me whether I'm a home owner, these days I always says "I intentionally rent, by choice" otherwise folks assume I've fallen on hard times or whatever!

Mine complains about my fence colour, the fact I put fences in (after they complained my trees had rats - they didn’t), my door colour, having a new drive, painting inside my house, when I put my Christmas tree up, where I store my bins, when I took the old owners slide down…

This for me as well, and maybe your neighbours OP.

Or the old fashioned talking to your neighbours....

House to the left rents. Love 'em - great people. Been there for a couple of years, but the house is council so I am hoping they stay.

House to the right owns. Miserable bastards.

I wouldn't know or care whether many of my neighbours own or rent!

Nope. We own because dh earns a bloody fortune. How people on lower salaries manage is beyond me.

Gosh you don’t seem nice though. I’m not sure what I’ve said that’s ’not Nice’ I’ve said it’s just different priorities and completely understandable. I didn’t want to spend my money investing too much in a house I was going to be in short term when I rented. Our neighbour that owns moved in and we’ve spoke a few times, in the same time 6 people have come and gone from the rented house next door, I’m polite with them all but there’s no point becoming ‘neighbours’ when they (again understandably) also don’t see the point either. Perhaps there are people who rent that I don’t know rent because they’re long term, but there’s lots on the street that come up every 6 months or so. I think it would be silly to think you’d have the same relationship with them, or that they’d act the same as someone who bought it / was planning to rent for years.

If you own, mortgage or not, you can:
choose who lives in your house
have pets
rent out a spare room
decorate any way you want
make fairly large scale changes - e.g. knock 2 rooms through into 1 or vice versa, change a bedroom to a bathroom and vice versa
stick a small shed etc in the garden
completely redo the garden
change front garden to driveway or vice versa
change the utilities to more cost-effective or better ones (i.e. heat pump/new boiler, solar panels, electric charger)

....without permission from "the bank". You usually can't if renting from a landlord.

Pretty different. Not to mention the opportunity to gain equity, not having to put up with inspections every so often, and, the most important of all, knowing that as long as you keep up with repayments there is no chance of you having to leave the property until YOU want to.

The 'you're just renting from the bank' really makes my eyes roll.

A mortgage isn't the same as renting, it's a deferred payment plan.
The whole definition of renting is that you will never, no matter how much money you spend on it, own the property at the end of the rental period. Whereas with a mortgage the aim is that you will.

There are lots of benefits to renting, you don't need to run down (and completely misrepresent) owning in comparison.

We own our house and slowly, more and more private renters are moving onto the Close but I honestly don't care whether they rent or not, so long as they're decent people.
We were lucky enough to secure a mortgage and buy our first house when we were in our very early 20s and I honestly don't think we'd be that lucky if we were trying to start out now.
Where we live, there's one vile couple (extremely vile) and they own their house, so renting vs owning makes no difference at all to what kind of people are living there.

Absolutely not
One of the senior manager at work who is on 3x my salary rents.
My son rents, so do some of my friends.
People do what works for them.

From direct experience I prefer living with owners as neighbours as I found tenants come and go more, so you never know who you might end up with next door.
They also, and this is from experience, had cars which broke down more often than a properly maintanied car, which could lead to nuisance.
When I did move I checked that both immediate new neighbours were owners and had been there some while. They were still there when I left that place after twenty years!

There are home owners who weaponise renting and imagine its some kind of social hierarchy. If you are paying a morgage (as opposed to owning outwight) you are just a debtor to the bank and nothing special. I never hesitate to remind people of that.

I rented for the first 10 years I lived here. Then I quietly bought the property from the LL so no one knew about the deal until the NDN wanted to snitch for something. She told me she had tried to ring LL (but the line was dead) and asked me if I had an up to date number. I told her LL now lives in ME and I dont have her number. "Oh so who is managing the property?" No one, I bought it from LL before she left. Not that its any of your business."

I enjoyed the look on her face. Especiallly when I added "Now you have no one to snitch to!"

From my involvement on LL forums most of them have little respect for snitching neighbours and are not going to get involved in personal disputes. They are only interested if it potentially damages the property or attracts unwelcome attention from statutory bodies.