do i REALLY have to explain why me and dh rent our house?

[spudFace]

we have been together for 20 years and have never had loads of money to save for a mortgage. what makes it worse is that my parents are very well off and have watched us struggle (and suffer) over the years. I am sick of telling people that i rent cos of all this but should i have to? i know that this subject will come up in conversation tomorrow with some new friends i have made recently. Am sick of the puzzled looks i get when i say I RENT MY HOUSE!!

what CAN i say to just tell people its none of their beeswax?

You don't have to have a big doo IYSWIM tho do you? and there's nothing wrong with renting either

touche expat!

I don't remember asking intrusive questions but it is not impossible

We also rent, and I know my parents worry about it and would love us to get on the property ladder.

We have our own plan and are saving money to buy something sometime. It's really none of their beeswax.

But I know how you feel. Some people look at you as if you're not quite an adult yet if you don't have a mortgage.

I was going to say, well, we rent, but we are a young family and are buying next year so hope not to be living in rented property in 15 years.
However, not everyone is in the position to do so, so what?
But we're not married either so next year when I'm an unwed home owner I'll remember to invite for dinner

WE rent and are not married and have children.WE have owned property[big deal]
Cod is Maggie Thatcher in a not very cunning disguise

I have to admit I dont understand why people rent long term.
Fair enough if you are moving around from area to area or something like that but if you libe in the same house/area for 20 years and pay rent all that time I think its a bit odd.
If you had bought 20 years ago then you would have nearly paid off your mortgage by now (most are 25 years) so in 5 years time you could be much richer in terms of disposable income.
In every flat or house I have lived in the mortgage per month was the same if not slightly less than the rent would have been on the same place (how do you think landlords make their money?)
With two of you living together you should be able to get a morthgage based on both salalries. If not then there are lots of shared ownership schemes where you can get a mortgage for a smaller level based on your salary and rent the rest, increasing your ownership as the mortgage gets paid off.

How does it come up in conversation? I don't think that's ever happened to me. I agree with upwind's comment about being a useful friend filter. It's better to find out that someone is a raging snob before they become a friend.

Anyway it's normal to rent where I live because there are a lot of people on short term contracts. There are 5 flats on my floor and I know that at at least 3 of them are rented.

I understand totally why its risky to buy at the moment, plus its harder to get mortgages, but I'm talking about over the last 20 years in my last post.

"to be honest i do frown upon people that live together with kids who are not married"

2point4kids - I agree with you. We have a very high mortgage, (due to buying 18 months ago when prices were high) and yet to rent our house would cost just as much.

Totally agree though, that if you dont want to have to explain then just dont mention it.

I dont think I have ever discussed with friends or people I have just met whether we rent or own our house. The only people that normally ask are banks on their forms lol

Ok, firstly, sorry but are you a troll? Dropping in how your parents are well-off and won't help and how you look down on non-married parents suggests that you might be.

If you're not a troll, are you seriously telling me that at no point in the past 20 years could you afford a mortgage? I only ask because one of my friends could afford a mortgage on her own back in the 1990s when she was earning 9k.

why would you explain?
i live in an area where most people own theire own homes, but if they dont, it's none ofmy business why they dont. their choice. their lifestyle. there private affairs.
it only ever crops up if people talking about how crap their kithcen /toilet/hallway is and ho w they want to get it done but cant coz of landlord etc.

2point4 the rent and mortgage paymetns may be equal, but if you dont have the deposit, then it isnt possible to buy.
and sometimes renting is cheaper, in the sense that if youget wood rot for example, it isnt your problem to pay out for.iyswim

I have never had a deposit either.
I got a 100% mortgage on my first flat.
When I came to move on from that place I used the money from the increase in value of the flat as a deposit on my new place.
Properties always go up in value long term (you just sit out blips like what is happening at the moment until it picks up again) so if you wait to get your 2nd place till your first place has increased in value then you will always have the deposit there.

I think there are very few parts of the UK where mortgage payments would be lower than equivilent rent payments. Check again 2point4, house prices trebled in the past few years and interest rates have gone up too. Rents seem fairly static by comparison.

The only person who ever asked if I owned a house was when I had baby number 1 and the midwife asked me (I don't think she believed I'd bought a house when I was only 22 (!) but it paid off over the last 20 years. I'm encouraging my 3 student age children to buy as soon as they can and obviously to make sensible career choices so that they are able to which is not something everyone thinks of and then they regret their lack of money later.

Good for you, 2.4, but you do understand that not all people made the decisions you did or were in a position to you?

For example, some would see taking out a 100% mortgage as foolish.

Others are too low income to have ever saved up a deposit and for fees and other costs.

Others lost their homes through redundancy, or debts or any number of reasons that are no one's business.

We will rent all our lives.

We cannot afford to buy - we cannot save for a deposit and will never quality and now I am pushing 40.

My parents could help, but my mother refuses to do so unless we moved to the US. That will never happen so long as I draw breath.

She never fails to beat that rug full of guilt dust, even though it's not worked for 20 years so you think she'd get over it.

It is their money and I did nothing to earn it, such is life, so we dodge along as we can here.

TBH, would you really want 'friends' who judged you in such a shallow fashion, spud?

I find that odd.

If asked such a question I'd simply respond, 'Whatever possessed you to ask such a personal question! How astonishing.'

Xenia! Where have you been?? You're needed on this thread

2point4, your info is out of date. 100% mortgages don't really exist anymore, and with prices falling, if you buy you risk being trapped by negative equity.

2point4, we rent a nice house in a nice area. We looked at buying, but we weren't even accepted for a mortgage for a crap house in a crap area.

i rent and i'm glad i do, i live in the peak district and house prices are horrendous, a friend of ours is barely managing to pay her mortgage because of the recent rises, our rent hasn't changed in three years and if it did we could easily move.
i'm glad that because we rent we can afford to live in a nice house in a nice area, our rent certainly wouldnt pay a mortgage on our house

there are advantages to renting tbh, owning your own home only means that you'll have to sell it in old age to pay for your nursing home.

I do agree that the market at the moment is very tough for buying and that it is incredibly hard to get a 100% mortgage.
If you've been renting for many years then now is not the time to stretch yourself to buy.

I am surprised to hear though that the rent would be higher than a mortgage on a lot of properties.
I have a place in London where the mortgage is exactly equivalent to the rent at the moment. Used to be higher.