Not necessarily looking for replies - I WFH and live alone so just want to vent. I know other people have worse problems, but this in mine right now.
I'm currently stuck in the hell of searching for a new rental. Everyday I check Right Move/Zoopla/Spare Room every couple of hours (when I should be working) to see what's new. Same story it's been for my past 10 years of renting - obscenely expensive rents for dog holes. I'm now on my 6th rental in that time (in between which were bouts of sofa surfing/Air BNBing - if you include those it would more be like 10-12).
Numerous arranged viewings have been cancelled as the house has been let in the interim, and I've wasted my leave on viewing crapholes.
The current move is due to numerous issues with the flat since day, now culminating in the landlord turning the building into a construction site, with the end date for these works repeatedly postponed. They were supposed to end in September and I received a letter the other day stating that further extensive works are now scheduled. Needless to say, the agents conveniently forgot to mention these long-planned works to me at the viewing/sign-up process. I complained, and they replied with a one-liner - 'you can move anytime with a month's notice'. As far I'm concerned, it was let to me fradulently and I am due a reduced rent for putting up with constant building work all day, yet what can I do? No point going the legal route as they've let me leave the contract early. Just another letting agents full of two-faced lying scumbag leeches. How do these people sleep at night?
I'm trying to save for a deposit so I can look to buy somewhere next year or 2024, but am stuck in that quandary of - rent somewhere crap but cheap so I can save more, or rent somewhere actually nice to live in but more expensive? I earn about the averge non-London UK salary. Realistically I do not want to pay more than £700 +bills a month for rent (which is already an utterly exorbitant figure), yet it seems that anything actually nice starts at at £800. Last year when I was looking for this place £600 could get you something ok-ish. Now there is nothing you can get for £600 except a house-share or lodging arrangement. I'm in my 30s. My choice is to pay through the nose to live like an adult, or live like an overgrown student. And all the time the rents just go up and up whilst my salary stays the same.
I'm done thinking about the wider implications of all this. The house/rent price insanity started under Labour and had continued unabated under the Tories. None of the Westminster blob give a toss. To them on their £80k salary + expenses there is no housing crisis, so they're in no urgency to do anything and therefore nothing will be done. My long-term plan was always to have kids one day, but honestly the housing issue alone is making me really have second thoughts. My parents bought a nice house in their 20, no degree, just a basic admin job. That seems like an impossible dream for me, and I dread to think what things will be like when any child of mine is an adult. The thought of raising my kid in some horrible cramped apartment - just awful. Even getting a dog - another dream - has been repeatedly put off, as most landlords won't allow pets, and frankly the houses have been far too small for a dog so it would just be selfish.
I await the usual replies from home-owners - cut down on avocado toast, be thankful you don't live in [insert third world hellhole here], get a better job, no such thing as a free lunch blah blah.