NOW CLOSED: Is it still a home if you don't own it? Make your voice heard and discuss this topic with Barclays - £150 John Lewis voucher up for grabs

[AnnMumsnet]

Hello - you may have seen that this week Barclays have a big campaign to get people talking about home buying and money topics.

Yesterday we discussed "When are you too old to ask your parents for financial help?".

As stated before - the team at Barclays say "We want to know what Mumsnetters think about home buying and money dilemmas.

So our second question is "Is it still a home if you don't own it?""

Please share your thoughts on this thread - there are no right or wrong answers and the question will mean different things to different MNers.

Add your thoughts below and you'll be entered into a prize draw where one winner will get a £150 John Lewis voucher.

Look out for one final thread on Thursday where we'll be asking one more question.

Thanks MNHQ

PS Please note your comments along with your MN name may be used on the Barclays pages on Mumsnet and elsewhere.

Yes, it's still your home.

It's where you keep your things, sleep at night and also where you see the people you love.

I've rented ever since leaving my parents' home over 10 years ago, some nice places, some not so nice, and I think the question is missing the point of a home. Of course a rented property is still a home, or can be! Creating a home isn't about choosing the colour of the carpet or being able to sort out the damp problem - that's decorating and maintaining a house. A home is about family atmosphere, love, respect etc.

I shared a house with a group of friends after leaving university, and it was home to me because we were very close and treated each other like family. Later on my small studio flat was definitely not a home because there was nobody to share it with. Now I am married and rent with DH and both places we've lived in the past year and a bit have been home to us. It would be great to own a property, have more confidence that we probably wouldn't have to move for years and be able to decorate however we wanted to, but it wouldn't make it more of a home than what we have at the moment - that's a different issue.

yes Its a home but it has a different vibe when you own it.

When we were renting we were told the house we were living in was going up for sale so we had to move.... in another house we had land lords spying on us (like on the advert!) and complaining through the letting agents that we haddnt cut our grass in 3 weeks :/ (we had very good reasons why we hadn't)and it was hard to feel homey when your being spyed on.

But being able to paint walls, hang things up and properly make it your own, makes it have more of a vibe of being your home

I always rented until a few years ago and never stayed more than 18 months in any place (my choice through work and relationships). The rented places always felt like homes to me.

Sometimes I'd do a little decoration (with permission of the landlord) but even if I didn't having my own things and my own front door or even my own room in a shared flat was enough for me to feel at home.

It was only the last place I rented in that I felt differently. I had a tiny baby and the landlord's almost total lack of response to our very reasonable requests to fix basic things like the plumbing in the bathroom was really upsetting. It was my first experience of such an unprofessional approach - ironic as it was also the first time we paid so much money for what should have been a highly desirable property.

Landlord was just a young guy living in another city and obviously couldn't be bothered with his responsibilities but was very happy to take our rent cheque every month.

Agree that requiring landlords to be more professional and giving tenants more rights to longer leases (if they treat the property with care of course) would be a great way to make renting a better option.

Yes, of course it's still your home. It might not be YOUR HOUSE as such, but whether you own it or not, makes no difference as to whether it's home. We live in a tied house, with my husband's job. We're very fortunate, but of course, he won't have his job forever, but for the forseeable future, we're happy to call it home. It's a farmhouse in an area we would never otherwise be able to afford to buy/probably rent so consider ourselves very lucky to be able to bring up our family here :-)

I've never rented property, but I know rented houses can feel like homes.

I was brought up in a rural area where lots of people rent houses from estate owners, and a rented house can stay with one family for many generations. That's most definitely their home, and they're supposed to treat it as such.

Of course it is. Home is where my family and my stuff live whether i'm paying a mortgage or rent to live there.

If you feel secure it can be rented or mortgage and still be home. I feel it depends more on how you feel about it. If you are constantly scared of missing payments for rent or mortgage it can really sour your attachment to a place.

superchristmasscrimper - my army quarters have always been my home. we have painted them, put up many many pictures, brought our newborns to them, nursed dh through a serious accident in them, had family to stay all over the world.

Just because I have to repair picture holes and re-paint it magnolia and deep clean when I leave, doesn't actually stop me doing anything.

If you choose not to paint your mq, that is entirely your choice (I assume because you can't be bothered with the rectification to standard). But don't say you aren't allowed to, because you are. We always hang our own curtains etc. everyone's mq looks completely different.

If you are saying that you can't afford to do these things, so your home is not personalized, then that's fine. But it just puts you in the same position as civilians in similar financial circumstances, bar the fact you'd have to do it every time you time you move. Ad I guess that's what we spend our disturbance allowance on. It's reasonably generous, which is presumably why people choose to get new washing machines etc instead.

'Just spotted the Barclays ad on the right- Home Buying, make your voices heard. Hmmm.

How about- Rights for tenants- make your voices heard?'

Too right.
'
I didn't say I would accept a break clause, Expat, just that I don't think it's necessary.

And honestly, if the laws are so bad in England about renting, do what you can to get them changed. Talk to your MP. Start a campaign. Whinging about it on MN isn't going to do anything but maybe make you feel better. Unless that's your goal. '

Okay, Tee,so did you sign an agreement with a break clause or not, because well, I'm in Scotland, not England, but, again, regardless of if you think it's necessary, if it's in there, and you sign it, the landlord can serve you two months notice at any time after the first 4 months.

How do you know what people on here are doing with regards to tenancy laws? I suppose it's just easier to label people who disagree with you whingers, it's your standard MO.

We're in a HA flat, so have security of tenancy, but do care and work towards changing it in the private sector.

I agree with several pps - offensive question given the current state of affairs in this country.

it doesn't feel like a home. i can get myself comfortable, but theres only so much i feel i can do. the neighbours complain as the garden is a jungle, but it would take renovators to come and cost thousands to sort it out properly. i cannot maintain it the way it is. there is no way i would ever get it done if im renting, and landlord won't do it. thats one problem. then i would love a new bathroom. our bathroom is awful looking, and the floors need done. i guess i can't complain, i have a nice house in a nice area. and im more concerned with other things in my life at the minute. but i could get frustrated when i think of the house and the way i want it. plus the feeling of insecurity that i could be put out or the rent can be put up. plus the fact that when anything needs done it takes the landlord a month and about ten phone calls to even register it in his diary. renting for me is not ideal but its ok as long as nothing goes wrong

I feel if in a HA/council then easily, it can be done in private, but only if you (i) plan to be there for a while and (ii) feel comfortable and secure with the LL

I agree with the poster that said it depends how secure you feel and that means whether you feel secure in meeting mortgage or rental payments. My parents have been mortgage free for decades and have a huge sense of security and 'home'. I'd be more affected by them moving from the house I grew up in than I am by the fact that I have never lived in one house for more than 3 years.

Do Barclays think that a financially incentivised discussion might skew responses or are they not concerned with broad representation here?!

We rented for many years before finally buying a house this year.

None of our rented houses ever fully felt like a real home. They always felt a bit thin and makeshift and never properly ours. Things like not being allowed to put pictures/photos up, and having landlord quality fixtures and fittings meant that all the houses/flats we rented felt less 'solid' (and certainly much less nice) than our parents' bought houses.

And then there's the maintenance issue. It's not great when you can't do anything about problems and are at the mercy of your landlord, who may or may not fix it (and almost certainly not the way you'd've liked things). Our last house was very draughty and impossible to keep warm (despite humongous gas bills) and the garden was completely impossible to maintain (dreadful drainage meant that it was a swamp year round, and the previous tenants hadn't so much as tried to cut the grass in 5 years so it was well-established and I possible to eradicate weed central).

Sure our house isn't perfect, but it's nice to be able to fix things the way we want them (or to know that we've decided not to bother). Part of it feeling more like home is that we know we have no plans to move for the foreseeable future too. In rented we always knew we'd be moving on (and sometimes not when we wanted to).

We also no longer need to worry about getting our deposit back.

And we noticed that the neighbours are much more friendly when you move into a house that had a 'for sale' sign rather than a 'to let' one.

We are renting for a year, following a relocation with the whole family. I really like our rented house, it is very comfortable, and a good sanctuary whilst we look around for something to buy - a breathing space. We are very fortunate to be able to do this, in a rental market which is hyper competitive and very expensive. It is a temporary home, festooned with our photos and pictures in designated places on the wall, lots of familiar objects everywhere, but also lots of restrictions ( no trimming shrubs etc in the garden/no pets/subject to lots of inspections, no decorating to our taste, etc) - so we have tried to make it our own space, filling it with things the family love. The children have adapted very well to not sticking things on the wall, treating everything with respect hopefully and not painting their walls their favourite colours...... In many respects I feel sorry for the house, as it is in need of an update, some tlc and some redecoration, as it has been 'home' to successive families in our position.

Home is definitely where we are all together, but it has to feel safe and secure, and those renting from dodgy landlords, on insecure tenancies, and as a last resort, should also be able to feel this way about their respective 'homes'.

Ahardyfool: I think you're right that it would depend (at least to some degree) on how secure you felt in the affordability of your mortgage/rent. Our monthly mortgage payment is slightly lower than our rent used to be (and for a bigger house). We purposefully chose to limit our price range so that we will always be able to live off one salary (because you never know what might happen). Luckily we live in a part of the country where doing that was an option.

It's not just security about keeping up the rent/mortgage and having a longer tenancy. Some private landlords excessively check on their tenants. It's a lack of privacy issue too. We see many on this thread already. A friend was told to clean the oven or she will get a notice to move out! (She hired a professional company that specialised in cleaning ovens for tenants to do it. But she has no kids). I was told by my first LL to keep the heating on during the day when both me and DH were at work. She blamed us for the damp problem, but the bathroom has no fan and its was a open paln kitchen living area. The cooking and showering water has no where to go.

As for those who say stick it up to the LL. There is a lot of demand for rental property in the nicer part of town :(

I couldnt call a rented house my home because of the insuciraty that the ll could ask us to leave when they want. Owning a house is much better but is a lot of responsability to maintain and update.

My dh had his house before we meet after getting married and our first child i put my name on the mortage and deeds but i still think of the house as his house but my home.

I think i will feel better when we move and buy a house for us as a family and it will be our forever home

Yes, I did say in my first post that you are at the mercy of your LL and that's not fun. Neither is dealing with letting agents, who have (in my experience) always been total bastards (who charge exorbitant fees for the displeasure of dealing with them).

Why can the letting agents charge so much for reference checks? What do they really do?

And lots of LL are a nightmare to deal with. Previous landlords have: tried to sell the house and then got annoyed that we gave notice rather than staying on and making their house look like a home; run up loads of really bad debt at the address so we had to deal with bailiffs repeatedly, and had difficulty setting up utilities; and kept checking up on us and making ridiculous demands about what we could and couldn't do in our flat.

In fact, we were keen to emphasise to the people we showed round our old house (who went on to rent it) that our previous LLs were actual, professional landlords who would let you rent as long as you want, left you alone to live your life and actually maintained the property. You'd think finding that in a LL would be easy, but it usually isn't.

It depends..I think if you're in secure rented accommodation, can decorate and personalise it, then yes it will feel like a home. Many landlords won't allow alterations, and with every possiilty of eviction/landlord selling up, then it just feels like a house. And time makes a place a home.

I think it can be a home even if you don't own it, as many of the factors which create a home aren't to do with ownership of the bricks and mortar.

However obviously owning the place is going to make the occupants feel very much more secure which in turn will make it much more likely to feel like a home.

Equally you could own a place but it not be your home.

There's at least one thread a week here, and usually more, about bad private landlords, there are two right now, both of whom have landlords who have failed to maintain the property to a legal standard of safety (one doesn't even have a gas certificate in place). Reams of them over the years, tenants asked to show round potential buyers, landlords coming in to spy, letting themselves in with no notice, agencies coming in with no notice, etc etc.