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?

Or the renters will have their rent paid by housing benefit whilst all that money the home owners have paid out will go towards nursing home fees if god forbid they are required, or home help.
The concept of owning ones own home is quite outdated and not financially rewarding any more.

we got it all the time when we rented, very annoying indeed, we were just having a stop gap waiting for dp to sell his house and house prices to come down. I got a bit hacked off with it in the end and was happy to buy, but we took our time and found the right place at the right price. It's none of their damn business how you spend your money, and where we are you can rent a £500,000 house for 600 quid a month so renting is a really sensible option. Just tell them to bog off. Since we moved into our house we do nothing but spend every penny we have on maintenance and renovations. It was such a luxury not to have to worry about a leak or a blocked drain! Our first christmas we had to spend 200 quid getting the drains unblocked..

Katie DD - Whilst it is a pity so much of the money from homes people own goes to paying care home fees I still think it is much better to own a home.

If you own your home outright by retirement at say 65 you will probably have at least 10 yrs of living in your nice house rent/mortgage free before having to sell it to pay for care home fees and many people manage to live at home well into their 80s..the house will hopefully be worth enough to give you the choice of care home.

I think the main difference now is that due to high care home fees the next generations inheritance will probably be less.

I think the means testing system for homes is unfair as it punishes many who have worked hard all their lives and gone without expensive holidays etc. to live within their means and pay their mortgages off. It would make sense for the wealthy to pay more for their care homes but I think they should be entitled to a contribution from the state after all the tax they have paid.

And you don't have to worry about interest rates!

God I hope my dd lets me live with her, I'll be nay bother.

I suggested to my MIL she'd need to keep some money back for when she goes in a home

Rebelmum, I don't understand that argument. The one about 'you don't have to worry about interest rates'.
The landlord can also announce a rent increase. Then tenant has to decide whether they can afford it, or have to move to another place, witht he same rent as they are currently paying.
Or maybe tenant has a fixed term, rent this much for the next year. Same as many mortgage agreements. I know what our mortgage is for the next .... mths.

What is the difference, stress/worry wise ?

We've been renting for years and nearly bought last year but I am SO relieved that we didn't since I think prices are going to go down by another 30% at least and only when we think we're near the bottom of the market (so we'll have to guess that) will we buy.

The maths has been in our favour for a long time, it's been cheaper to rent than to buy.

When people can't afford their own houses any more you know there's something wrong with the market. (eg, you bought at 3 or 4 x salary in 1997 but would need 30 x salary to buy your house now).

i made the bail someone out comment to the point made about family being well off and watching them struggle but thread is untrue anyway so dont matter

i already stated people that own there own home struggle to do so

This article in the evening standard yesterday - the bit I most agreed with was this

"Perhaps she's not typical, but if she is, there's still a long, long way to go before the property market returns to stability. At least she should be grateful for the disappearance of the 100% mortgage. Had she bought her flat a year ago by borrowing nearly 10 times her salary (even Northern Rock might have baulked at that), she would have lost rather more than her total savings on the fall in value, and be saddled with repayments too steep to allow her to eat.

These sums show that the central problem of this crisis is not the difficulty in getting mortgage finance, but the fact that houses are grossly overpriced."

I rent. I pay the housing ass 90 a week.

My next door neighbours...same house/same garden..have a 245.000 mortgage to pay off.

Interesting article Wickedwaterwitch..lets hope prices return to within 3/4 times salaries again.

I certainly hope the government don't pander to the estate agents and house builders demands which will just put prices up again.

It would be good if they abolished Hips which seem a waste of time and money and put people off putting their houses on the market.

Tell them that in a falling market, owning your house is just owning a stake in the loss!

Ob rent doesn't go up in the same way, most houses you rent are owned out right. If you are paying say 600 quid you have to go a long way before it goes up to a grand, then unlike buying you just vote with your feet.

Rebel, no sorry I still don't understand. Price of rent can go up at anytime. Or you may have agreement,. Landlord can not raise price for the next 12 mths say. Then he may.
Same with mortgage. Prices may go up. OR you may be on a fixed price for a set term.

But in both instances, say you are paying £500. A year later rent for the same house has gone up to £600. Or mortgage rates have gone up to £600.
The only difference, is that as you say, it is easier to leave a rented. Easier to find another.

Either way, the stress is price increases and whether you can afford it.

I disagree. Most rented houses/flats are not owned outright these days but owned on buy to let mortgages.

Its these buy to lets which are most in danger at these times and could one of the reaspns why rents in my area have soared recently

Our landlord wanted to put our rent up a few months ago. I offered half of the increase and backed it up with examples of other similar houses on the rental market at the same or lower price than we pay. We are good tenants, pay on time, and want to stay but if he had insisted we would have moved tbh. He agreed to my amended figure. And he was right to, we are his birds in the hand.

Oblomov - rent rarely shoots up the way mortgage payments can as a fixed rate comes to an end. I don't know anyone on a fixed rate longer than two years.

Rent can only be increased once a year, and then with notice, so if you can no longer afford the rent you can move to cheaper accomodation. In reality few landlords would want to lose a decent tenant and risk a void period. A property being empty for a month or so would wipe out any gain from increased rent.

The bad part of renting is that it is insecure - the landlord might decide to sell at any time or they might be reposessed. But it works both ways, if you have nightmare neighbours you can easily move.

never had that problem in all the years I have rented, you are far less likely to stretch yourself with rent than you are with a mortgage. My rent was less than half the mortgage I'm currently paying. Most houses in my area are owned outright and annual increases are nominal. there has never been a shortage of houses to rent in my area.

Our lease will expire soon. If the landlord wants to increase the rent we will ask for new carpets (they were very grotty when we moved in). If they object we will move to somewhere more suitable for our growing family, we would be moving anyway in a year's time.

Upwind, I know loads of people on 5 yr deals at the moment. God it is highly recommended. We are only on a 2 yr deal. Lots of pople are.
But our mortgage payments haven't chnged that much in the last few years. Yes an increase. There is an increase in everything. Small increase in wages

Not many epople find their mortgage has gone up by £400 suddenly, from £600 to £1000, do they ? Of course most people can not suddenly find £400. Most Mn'ers would struggle at that. I can not see that is the norm. That hasn't happened to any of my friends or colleagues.

I thought the majority of lets were buy-to-let mortgagges, as Hughjar says.

oh i get this too!! frankly, i dont think i would want a high mortgage round my neck the way things are at the moment! maybe one day, yes we will buy, but I just don't want to at the moment! Not only that, but if something goes wrong with my house, I don't have to worry about forking out to pay for it to be fixed!!

Didn't mortgage rates once go up to 15% If you are truly stretched which most people are with a mortgage an extra 200 quid a month will make all the difference, especially if living costs also increase and bills go up as much as 40% my mortgage has already gone up from 5% to nearly 6% in only two years.

Interest rates WERE at 15% once, yes, I remember it.

And actually, I don't think landlords ARE in scuh a great position atm as it's all very well saying "they can sell" but can they? Not much is moving atm.

These thread always degenerate into the housing "have-nots" claiming that owning a property is a terrible, pointless thing. If you're so happy renting why the need to knock people who buy?