To except we can never afford to buy our own house

[happygolovely]

Like most people my dd and ds share a room we have a two bed,they love sharing but we will when they are older have to divide the room and get by, as we simply can not afford to buy a 3 bed house.

I am very grateful for what we have and in a way it could be worse I get on with my life but do get angry with myself and wish I had planned my future better finacially, and gone into a decent career after I left school ,aibu.

well you never know how things will turn out - we could never afford to buy a house now (we rent a 3 bedroom house but couldnt afford to buy the same house or even a smaller house). We are 26 so I keep telling myself "dont worry it will all work out in the end" it might not and I could be struggling to pay rent as an 80 year old but I avoid thinking about that.

DP and I are in the same boat. we struggle with rent at the moment. 12 months ago we sat back and looked at where we want to be in 10 years and came to the conclusion that I would have to train to (hopefully)get a higher earning job. am starting uni in september!

Starting to feel the same here. We have been renting for 8 years now, and we currently pay way under what we should for out 3 bed semi- though it's poor condition is a major reason why the LL doesn't charge more.

We have no savings, no pension and no way of moving any time soon. We live hand to mouth, but so do a lot of people.

I know things could be worse, but it does get me down when I think about it

Agree with fernie3, you just never know how life will pan out or where you will be in a few years. DH and I have planned our lives entirely with the aim of financial security, and you know what? We're no happier because of it. You've got 2 lovely children who are happy sharing a room and you don't sound unhappy yourself - if you had a 3 bed house, it would probably be more convenient but I doubt it would make any meaningful difference to your or their happiness.

Just wait and see how things go. You can't predict what life will present you with. If you want to retrain and do a different job or whatever, then do that. But don't let it get you down that you didn't do this or that when you were at school or whatever - you did what you did and the place you're in is pretty good really, isn't it?

happgolovely - there are lots of young people in very well paid jobs that still can't afford their own homes! I think it is a case of house prices being far too high in most areas of this country rather than your career choices.

YANBU - everyone should have the right to a secure roof over their head with enough space.

Hi Emsyj you have hit the nail on the head, im happy and tbh yes it would nbe nice to have bigger kitchen,own drive one extra bedroom etc ,but deep down would not really want a massive mortgage hanging over our heads.
Im a sahm we could not do that if we owned a house.

Do you mean accept rather than except. . . . ? I think so.

i know what you mean (even with the wrong word in title)

i feel the same,case of making the best of what you've got i suppose

I have owned a flat and a house and now I'm renting. Honestly, it's a big relief not having to worry about how to pay for the next thing that breaks or how to afford the maintenance and general improvements.

I think that owning your own house is not only over rated, it is also a big lie. The bank owns the house, not you, and not many people ever get to pay off their mortgage.

I think it's very deep in our culture that the key to happiness is owning your own home - but that's a very old way of thinking, from back when it was actually possible to own your own house one day, ie pay off the mortgage.

I rent a small 3 bed room flat with a tiny garden, the landlord is really nice and I feel like it's my home.

Think about it. Feeling at home is a feeling. Owning your own home is just words and paper.

I have been renting for 12 years now and after having a fabulous time all through my 20s partying hard rather than working hard I am now 33, with a DS aged nearly 2 and a partner the same age as me who did not buy into the career and money path in his 20s either.

Sometimes I kick myself that we are renting with no security of tenure, no savings and minimal pensions and think it could all be so different if I'd buckled down in my 20s, but I try to remember life would be pretty dull if I'd spent it all worrying about getting on the housing ladder asap.

I think everyone would view renting very differently if we were more like Europe, where it's much rarer to own and people who do rent have a lot more rights.

The funny thing is, we're hardly low earners, our household income is 40k+, but we need to save about 30k to even get a mortgage in our area!

I know how you feel. I would love a nice 3 bed house with a decent size garden. We have a tiny 2 bed with the smallest garden ever. We are only buying 30%, and renting the other 70% as its the only way we can have our 'own' house. We rented crappy flats for years with nightmare landlords and nothing ever getting done. We cannot even afford to rent a decent 2 bed flat where we are as the rents are so high.

When we have another DC, our DS will have to share his room and unfortunately its way to small to split the room so they will have to make do.

I am hoping that something slightly better does happen in the future though.

I agree misscph1973 but if your landlord gives you 2 months notice to leave because he wants to sell up you soon learn it is not your home! Moving around with children at local schools is no fun. Nor is trying to get many landlords to maintain the property or do repairs.

Renting needs to be a viable option in this country if the reality of home ownership is impossible for increasing numbers of people.

i'm with my 5 dc in a smallish,3 bed housing association house. its fine,though today i've bid on a 4 bed in our village...i'm not so keen really as i love our little house.

I agree mintyfresh we have been given short notice to move before now (after only 6 months in the house) and had to take out a bank loan to afford the deposit and months rent. Its a pain and not secure at all.

accept, really i'm not suprised if you can't at least see the difference between accept and except

south is on a roll tonight!

i accepted it long ago.

my folks, well, hopefully they'll live long and die broke.

i told Papa, when i was there at the beginning of the month, to please rewrite their wills so all would go to my sister upon both their deaths.

but i know, i know, there will be the house on Fontenelle Street.

and i know my sister, well, she'd give up every cent of that house if it meant we'd go back there and live. she doesn't need money, in all truth.

and you know, if my kids are all 16+ when that day comes, and i hope they are because it will mean Papa and Mama were well, well on when they passed, then i think we'll go.

because there's no place for folks like us here.

then i guess we'll own our own house.

but i'll never consider it mine.

it'll be ours: Mama, Papa, Liza and me.

isn't that what a home really is?

what a horrible comment, sea

was that really necessary ?

do you find people's anxiety at their future funny in some way ?

< shakes head >

er yes it was fucker sorry, i've only got on o level too and that wasn't even in english

Good point, mintyfresh, I have always moved if the landlord was unreasonable, so I never got to get kicked out ;)

I have had dreadful landlords as well, which I why I ended up buying twice, but the worries with repairs and replacements was a lot worse for me than a nasty landlord - but it's all about your perspective, I guess.

I hate moving and I do hope I can stay here for a few years. My contract is one year only but I will ask for a longer lease when I renew in August. The people who lived there before me were there for 3 years so I think I have a good chance.

The renting market in England is not great though - it's like landlords feel the need to make sure their reputation of being bastards is a thing to aspire for.

Also, people look down on people who rent. I rent and until recently I didn't have a car as I work from home and didn't need one and it was so funny to see the look of pity mixed with "glad I'm not in her shoes" on people's faces when it came up in conversation.

I know what you mean OP. We had a mortgage on a 2 bed which we "bought" when DD1 was a baby/ 3 years later we had another baby and another on the way; it was far too small. We sold it and now rent a lovely big house. The pros are many: we don't have to worry about maintenance, it's half the cost of our mortgage, the kids have somewhere to play (no garden in old house), DH and I get on so much better now we're not strapped for space, children can leave their toys out etc etc. But I do worry about being older and not owning our own house. Like someone else said, we're fortunate enough not to be low earners (combined is around 40-45k), but yes, we need around 30k as a deposit.

No regrets though. I hope the children will look back on their childhoods as being really special (we live on a farm in the middle of nowhere now), which was what we wanted. That beats the sterile blandness of the new build we used to live on hands-down as far as I'm concerned.

not even remotely amusing, sea

ha at anyfucker taking offence with a name like anyfucker

er im laughing

We moved into our current house last May with a prmoise of a long term let. We're now about to embark on our 3rd move since I got pregnant; our current landlady has decided she wants the house back to live in herself as it's in a good catchment area. I know it's her place on paper and not ours, but would love to be able to just live somewhere decent in the area of the city we both love securely with our DS, whether we have a mortgage on it or not.

southeastastra Grammar ability really does not correlate with how much money you have in your pocket, and that is exactly the sort of "us and them" attitude surrounding home-ownership I think the UK needs to shake off.

sea, what poor manners you are displaying.