Do you feel lucky to have a house

[Lm1981]

I am early 40s and have a nice house which i constantly feel very fortunate to have. I rented all my 20s so can still relate to how renting felt like. I often think I am very lucky to be in this position and slightly embarrassed. I did work hard I just know that things could have been different. Does anyone else have any feelings like this?

I have a flat which I absolutely love, but I know I have it purely on luck.

At 23 I became a single parent, still living at home, having blown a significant compensation pay out.

I moved into a housing association flat and bought it at 25% discount after 11 years. I know that's an unpopular approach, but I felt I had to secure something for my son's future and my area did not seem to be crying out for social housing.

I sold it to an random investor at the end of 2021, adding an additional small profit to the savings I had managed to get together during covid.

This was the first property I viewed after that, and I really do feel like those couple of months were probably the luckiest of my life.

Rates rocketed quite soon after and to buy this flat again now, I'd be at least £175 worse off each month.

I made some very stupid choices and perhaps some selfish ones, but I absolutely realise how lucky I am.

Yes I feel incredibly lucky and fortunate.

There are people in the world that work just as hard or even harder than anyone posting here but will never be in the position to have their own house, we are very privileged even if we've worked for what we have.

Yes very lucky. Me and DH have saved hard and forgone many nice things like holidays and clothes and we only have a medium 3 bed semi but it's home and its ours I'd happily live here for forever.

I feel extremely lucky to have a house. I was in my early twenties when we bought it and most people I knew who were my age were still renting. We were able to buy one because of my husband’s salary. I wouldn’t have got to that stage for years on my own. So yes I’m very fortunate because I know there’s people who’ve worked harder than me for a house and haven’t been able to get one yet.

Yes! We built it ourselves, living in a static caravan for 18months while we did the work so we are mortgage free.

I love it and the best part is we have no neighbours!

Yes I do feel very lucky indeed. I managed to buy the house on a 90% mortgage, entirely on my own at the age of 39. It is a three story Victorian house with four double bedrooms and three reception rooms and I pinch myself every day because I can't believe that it's mine.

My parents went to their graves without ever owning a property.

No, I inherited properties from my grandparents and through my sole hard work I have sold them at a substantial mark up.

Is it not kind of lucky you inherited them in the first place?

Yes, same. I feel grateful every day that we (and our children) won't have to worry about insecure housing and lucky for having been born into circumstances that gave us the support, tools and education to get here.

Lucky that I was able to pull enough money together to buy a small house for me & dds after divorce, especially as in London- albeit a cheaper part.

Unlucky that to be able to afford it I am mortgaged until I am 73, and that my lovely fixed term is just about to end. That means the £300 - £400 increase to monthly payments is all on me, not sure if I will be able to manage tbh- maybe I can extend the term til I’m 83 to make it manageable 🤣

Always lucky. Lost our first home to neg equity/interest rates/shifting job in the mid 90s. Scraped enough together (and went back to work with a baby and toddler) to get a house just before prices started rising again.
Yes we worked hard and prioritised paying off the mortgage
But never forget that our luck was:
Both being healthy
Both having stable employment
Our kids being healthy which meant that we could both work full time
We stayed together and were happy
People often fail to see their luck.

Yes, absolutely. Although we were able to buy a big enough house because we had a large deposit which sadly came as a result of a bereavement. We bought 17 years ago and there is absolutely no way we could afford to buy our house now, even though our income is much larger.

Depending on where you live, for some people no amount of "hard work" is going to get them their own home.

Yes very much so. I'm still paying it off but will own it within 8 years

This is part of the problem now. If parents encouraged their children to save after college / uni they'd have a sizeable deposit after 5 years. But young people want holidays, cars, nice clothes now. I know plenty of people with kids still at home in their late 20s who spend every penny they earn. Plus no one wants a doer upper in a rough part of town any more

Yes, I know I am lucky. I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s in a privately rented flat above a shop and then in council housing. It was fine, I always had a roof over my head. It was not so fine for my parents who struggled financially their entire lives because it’s a hard system to get out of when you have children. I’ve hidden behind the sofa many times when the rent man has knocked the door. They both worked hard. Times were just tough.

Fortunately for me, they had moved to a decent semi rural area before I was born and I have a house I own with a mortgage there now. My husband had a small inheritance from his grandparents which we used as a deposit. Yes we have to work hard to pay for everything but I am so lucky. My parents never had this stability I have. Even if we couldn’t pay our mortgage now, we have enough equity to downsize and buy a cheaper property. So many people do not have that stability and luxury. So yes I am really bloody lucky!

Yes I feel very lucky. came back from abroad in 2001 having lost everything when house prices dropped there. Within six months managed to buy a house ( with a bit of help from parents ) just before house prices started spiralling. Feel very lucky everyday to have a decent sized house where adult kids can come back to if they need to at any time.

No I don't feel 'lucky'. I do feel fortunate. Luck suggests something beyond our control and random - there's nothing random about the fact I own my house. I do feel fortunate though - I know many people my age don't.

Well yes. And also no.

The yes part is that I really feel for people who don’t, having both rented for a long time in my twenties and thirties and also having been technically homeless as a child due to repossession (parental abandonment).

The no part is that I think it’s absolutely abhorrent that housing is so insecure for so many people in this country. And that so many people also live in substandard housing.

It’s also absolutely abhorrent that having a stable secure home, whether owned or social rented or rented with decent rights and protections is so out of reach for so many people through no fault of their own.

And that isn’t a question of luck, it’s down to people being on the receiving end of the consequences of both deliberate policy decisions and also other people’s greed and insecurity which has spiralled into he toxic cesspit that is the UK’s housing “market” these days.

So I feel that through the determined love and sacrifice of other people in my family to effect changes and also some really hard work of my own I narrowly managed to escape being victimised to the extent so many other people have to continue to suffer. I don’t think that really counts as “luck” other than in the sense of “lucky escape”.

It doesn’t need to be like this. We aren’t a civilised or decent country if we let people suffer like this.

I feel fortunate every day ….yes we’ve both worked ….but so have many people who don’t own their homes ….my mortgage was paid off at age 48 ( age 59 now) and to own the roof over your head is a massive security blanket going forward to retirement….so I guess I do feel ‘lucky’ because things could always have turned out differently through no fault of our own

Well I would say that was fucking lucky 🙄

Yes, I'm incredibly lucky. I'm a sahm and it's DH's salary that has paid for everything so I was lucky to meet him and marry him. I'm in London where a lot of people we know can never afford to buy, or have had to move much further out or buy flats, even with very good jobs. We weren't particularly lucky with timing as we bought our first home less than 15 years ago, so not the days of super cheap property.

No, I absolutely don't feel "lucky". Why would you think that, rather than think the people, such as the younger generation, have been completely fucked over? It's not "lucky" really to have something as basic as your own home. It's something we should all be able to attain pretty easily. And it was really fucking easy to buy a house when I bought my first home when I was 19. As it was for my parents. But now we've got people feeling "lucky" and "grateful" that we've been "allowed" to buy a home? How about feeling angry that there's been a massive wealth transfer to the pension companies and the already wealthy landowners? How about NOT accepting the scraps we're thrown and being grateful and feeling "lucky"?

Not sure lucky is the right word. I was working 3 jobs before l met dh - once he moved in and we halved the bills, it gave us scope to uosize but l used to finish work at midnigjt and be up again at 5am to go and do my day job. Nobody told me l was lucky or priviledged then. Glad and thankful, yes but not sure lick had much to do with it.

This is the most rational and true comment so far.

Housing should be a right. We are in a sorry state

This one too. Agree 💯