Buying Cheaper Than Renting Everywhere except London

silvercar

mewbie wrote: »

Good point. It's easily worth 50k. 2k a year redecorating and maintenance costs, including stuff like boiler, kitchen, windows, roofing, plumbing, electrics, etc. for 25 years.

To me it would be worth £2k. If it was borrowed money, as my mortgage rate is only 1.25%, that costs me 48p a week.

Living your life in the style you want is what living is all about, otherwise you are just surviving.

silvercar

mewbie wrote: »

Good point. It's easily worth 50k. 2k a year redecorating and maintenance costs, including stuff like boiler, kitchen, windows, roofing, plumbing, electrics, etc. for 25 years.

To balance the maintenance costs of home ownership you have to include the moving costs of renting.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

silvercar wrote: »

To balance the maintenance costs of home ownership you have to include the moving costs of renting.

No,, maintenance is MUCH cheaper than that.

I've been in my current house, a 100+ year old 3 bed terrace, for over two years now.

Maintenance/upkeep costs to date, in over 2 years:

£2.50 New cupboard handle.

£5 Trowel to clean gutters with.

£5 Petrol for lawnmower.

£48 Boiler service

£103 Replace 17 slates on roof after winter storm, and patch hole in gutter. (Done by a slater, not me)

Total cost---- £163.50.

Less than £80 a year.....

In our last house we replaced kitchens and bathrooms, decorated twice, did all maintenance etc, and still only spent 10K in 20 years, and that was a 5 bed detached.

Maintenance just isn't expensive for most people.

tek-monkey

You can't compare renting to owning, there are to many variables. You say moving costs, how many times? Who stays in their first house for 25 years, how many moves should they factor? What about different insurance costs, what about interest rate changes, what about having to move at short notice for work, what about buying things to suit a property then needing to move compared to always being happy as you're in a permanent residence, what about the security of knowing you're safe where you are, what about the security of knowing if bills go up you can walk with 4 weeks notice, what about the price of fish?

You can't compare, to pretend you can means you are deluding yourself.

nollag2006

My first flat I bought in 1996, and sold in 2002 and didn't spend a single penny maintenance or decoration on it. Still pocketed almost £100k profit on it though.

I now live in a 4 bed detached, which I would estimate sets me back well under £1k per year to maintain. Probably closer to £500.

To be fair, putting in a new kitchen or bathroom might cost thousands, but that is more an upgrade than maintenance, and you should retrieve some (but rarely all) of it back when you come to sell

mewbie_2

Well OK, maybe I was unlucky to be the only one on here to suffer from a boll weevil plague. I noticed a small hole in the skirting and asked a neighbour. He said he'd ask his brother who diagnosed boll weevils. Fortunately a friend of his was a local Corgi registered boll weevil eradicator and to cut a long story short, several weeks later my house was clear of the infestation and I was out of pocket to about 40,000 pounds.

stonethrower

Nollag you must have idiots for tenants over a grand in Ealing

Cleaver

nollag2006 wrote: »

I bought a couple of flats in Ealing for just over £220k each in May (hopefully worth a little more now), and get a smidgen over a grand a month for each of them.

Its been a nice little earner thus far.

I’ve always considered renting a mugs game.

Can I run some figures past you? Let me know if I have any of this wrong. You said a mortgage rate of 5% and I'm assuming you must have had a deposit of something like 40% to get that type of rate on a BTL mortgage.

So the money you would have needed to set this up:
Deposit: £176,000
Stamp Duty: £4,400
Buying Costs: £1,500

So a total of £181,900 invested.

You said you get around £24,000 a month in rent and your mortgage would be around £13,200 on an interest only 5% jobby.

Let's assume you have a month void each year, your maintenance costs are £1,000 a year (which is low) and you get away with paying 10% tax a year.

That leaves you with a profit of around £6,000 on your investment of £181,900. Which is a return of around 3.5%.

As I say, I'm no expert on this so do correct me if I have any of my figures wrong. But just a small drop in property prices, one or two more months void or a couple of boilers breaking down and you're running at no profit or even a loss. Is it really worth all the effort for the same return you could get from a savings account?

carolt

stonethrower wrote: »

Nollag you must have idiots for tenants over a grand in Ealing

Agree, I used to live in Ealing. I'd be interested to know where that was. The same flats we rented in Ealing in 2003 for £900 still rent for...£900. But the price to buy has gone up way over £220K.

Nollag's lying again. He's a compulsive liar.

stonethrower

carolt wrote: »

Agree, I used to live in Ealing. I'd be interested to know where that was. The same flats we rented in Ealing in 2003 for £900 still rent for...£900. But the price to buy has gone up way over £220K.

Nollag's lying again. He's a compulsive liar.

just had a look in rigthmove very few flats over 1000 and as you say these are 3 bedroom flats which would cost way more than £220k