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?

No ones knocking anyone who buys. This thread is just debating the pros and cons of renting and buying.

Buying is more costly but at the end of the day you have a house you own, if you can keep up the repayments..

I don;t think owning property is a terrible pointless tihng, not at all. I have owned property before.

But I do think anyone buying in this market is mad though unless they are getting a 30%+ discount from asking price. Banks are asking for 20%+ deposits BECAUSE they think prices will go down that much and they need toi believe that their asset will be able to be sold to cover the mortgage debt.

I fully intend to buy again but only when prices have dropped. In the meantime renting is much cheaper.

The ideal scenario is to rent and invest the difference you would be paying in a mortgage each month.

Oblomov - you might not be as far off as you think, with your example. A lot of people (many of my friends/age group) took out 100% or even 125% mortgages a couple of years ago. As those deals come to an end they don't have enough equity to get another fixed rate deal so are stuck on the SVR. Which according to this article may be 40% higher than what they were initially paying. Many can't afford that.

No one has said that buying is pointless just pricey and not necessarily financially beneficial.

Yes, my dh owned his house when it went up to 15%. Awful. But it effects alot of people. It hits people hard. But we are all ( well not all, millionaires ecluded, but majority), it effects us all the same.

I view things differently. It all costs most people roughly the same. I mean there is no fantastic mortgage deal that you only pay 2 pence a month for. Else we would all be on it.
One couple takes out a mortgage in 2000. They pay £500. Fixed deal for 2 years.
Another couple takes out mortgage in 2001. It is now £550 .
2 years later 1st couple has to now pay £600.
A year later couple 2 has to pay £650.
They all end up paying a SIMILAR amount, over the years. Or else we would all be fighting for the same mortgage. Mortgage companies don't do any of us any favours. They get their money by hook or by crook. Either through % or inital costs, or whatever.

I don't agree with Bramshot, that mortgage is owning a stake in the loss. It is an investment. A risk. Yes. But you end up with an asset. Yes it could go belly up. But if your house suddenly becomes £100,000 worth less, highly likely that the house down the road that ytou want to buy has decreased propoportionally aswell.
And if you can't face a 15% increase. Join the club. Neither wil the other 80% of mortgage holders.

Plus, if there is a mortgage increase of that much. Will renters be any better off.
Theirs is 'wasted money' that they spend every month, isn't it. And is their rent going to stay the same. If mortgages go up by 15%, you will still be paying the same £600 rent ? I think not.

We are all in the same boat.
All screwed. You may choose to rent or mortgage. Both have benefits and risks.

Why do you need to explain? _ i find it odd that these people would even ask if you own the house you are living in never mind ask you "why" - vert odd people

Oblomov - the trouble is we are not all in the same boat - replace your last example with people who bought identical houses in 2000 and 2006. The person who bought in 2000 should have plenty of equity and be able to negotiate a good deal should they need to remortgage. The person who bought in 2006 is likely to have little equity, or even negative equity. Even if they can initially cope with payments on the SVR, should interest rates go up to 15% they will probably go to the wall. It is different from when it happened to your DH, because most people who bought for the first time in the past few years have been forced to stretch themselves to the max, borrowing up to 8 times their income. They are more vulnerable than the first time buyers of any previous generation have been.

Sorry, I never answerd Op. No one has ever aslked me if I rent/ why I pay a mortgage. odd, very odd. Why are these people asking you ?

Upwind, point taken.
can't type any more, too busy eating custard doughnuts.

If these new people ask, adopt a startled exression and say "Gosh, what an interesting question. Noone has ever asked me that before" which should give the message that it's because it's a BLOODY RUDE QUESTION. Or you could ask them in return how often they have sex, and why.

We were discussing this last night. We are moving and cant sell our house so we will be moving into a rented house. We could not afford to buy the house as it is over 300k although i suspect in this market she would not get that amount. The rent however is only 850 which we can easily afford. My dp is very uneasy about renting. After years of wanting a baby we have agreed to start trying but dp says he would not have a baby in a rented house which i find very odd.

Not want a baby in a rented house? Why on earth not? Plenty of people manage it. It's mainly in this country that we're so obsessed with being owner-occupiers. Not the same in Europe, I believe. And they seem to have babies........

My prediction is that any house now on the market at £300k will be on at £300k less around 30% in a year, so that will put it down to £210k.

Oblomov, it IS a stake in a loss!eg

If you pay £500k for a house, put down a £50k deposit say so borrow £450k, say if 2 years later it's worth £350k (so 30% less than the price you paid) but you still OWE £450k, you HAVE made a loss! And you can't sell your asset to repay what you owe. Well, you can, but if you sell at £350k you will have no house and STILL owe the bank the remaining £100k you borrowed to buy in the first place.

How odd not to have a baby just because you're renting. Dd wouldn't be here if we had had that view, she's 5 in Novembe.r

We suffered from neg equity in 1997 and we sold at 66% of the purchase value. We have more than got over it since but we were talking about tiny amts of money compared to now. Horrible feeling to think it will happen to people again.

I agree it is odd. I had dd with my ex when we lived in an apartment provided through his job. Dp her never rented went from home to the army to his own house and i know for him renting is a much bigger deal than it is for me. He comes from a very unstable background and when if met me i was struggling in a rented dive and i think he associates renting with instability.

Fair enough.

Twinset - my DH is a bit like that, but after talking through his reasons for not wanting a baby while renting he realised that none of them were really relevant until the baby is about four years old! And even then, I don't think they are that important. Maybe try discussing it with your DP.

After years of trying it is happening for us when least expected - rubs growing belly

I thought this thread was started sometime before August 2007
in which case I would have sympathised as it happened to us all the frigging time.

Not anymore, though..turns out house prices can fall, who would have thunk it.

I have to rent, im a single mum with 2 young children and im at uni. admittedly its a council flat so the rent is next to nothing and im in the process of applying for housing benefit so it will be nothing. but i dnt know if i will ever be able to afford to buy. i might try and buy my flat but thats about as far as i think i'll ever get unless I get married and we buy together.
I dont see anything wrong with renting and at the end of the day its your money so what business is it to anyone else!

I rent and probably always will do ,however i have an assured tenancy and bar me murdering my neighbours i cant see a time where i would be kicked out ! The thing that always makes me chuckle about 'owning ' your own home ,is that in reality you dont 'own' the house until the mortgage is paid off and it isnt safer than renting really because if your life goes pear shaped you could still be out on the street . We have chosen not to buy because our rent is less than £500 a month and a mortgage and insurances for a similar sized property in this area would be £1,700 a month , we could just about afford that ,but it would mean a poverty line standard of living and i would rather have a nice standard of living for my family for the next 20yrs than 'own' a mortgage

thanks, hughjarss! it's not as hard round here. we live in a rural area.

oh, and in scotland, a family cannot be housed in a B&B.

i'm glad for all of you who were fortunate enough to be able to buy when the market wasn't so inflated, when you were young and didn't have kids, because you made enough money to save up for a deposit and/or qualify for a mortgage.

good for you!

but if you look down on others who weren't similarly fortunate, you're pretty much a dick.

By the time I am 50 my mortgage will be paid off and me and dp will be moving abroad, (I would hate to spend my retirement years in this country where elderly people are second class citizens) that is the main benefit of a mortgage. No matter what happens to house prices in the next five years, in the long term we will make a profit and that is why no one will ever convince me long term renting is a good idea.

some people do it because they can't get a mortgage, save for a deposit/fees/stamp duty, to keep their child in a certain school or the like.

or they had one and lost their house and can't get another one - there are several people here on this board to whom this has happened.

big fucking deal!

i can't honestly see why people care whether another rents or buys or not, or why they do it.