The Reality of Renting in Britain today....

FATBALLZ

Maybe people with experience of renting would be better placed to make threads about what it is actually like.

markharding557

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

I have a second property but I don't rent it out.

Shortly after we paid off our mortgage, an elderly relative had a tragic change of circumstances. She moved in with us in our first house, we bought a second house in town (whoch we were planning to do anyway) and moved there, and we let her live in our old house completely rent free. It was the right thing to do.

Now I could rent the house at market value and rent her a flat, and make a profit, but that's not really the point. She enjoys living there, nice house, quiet rural location, has made friends with the locals, etc.

well done on helping your relative,not many would do that these days:beer:

Out,_Vile_Jelly

Joeskeppi wrote: »

Seriously though, I would love to live in London, but I have to make a choice not to, so should she. Problem solved.

I lived in Croydon when I first worked in London in a nice, cheap flatshare. 15 mins into Vicoria or London Bridge. Just not very trendy though.

BitterAndTwisted

Yep, wanting to be in Zone 2 was that person's first mistake. I have a feeling that they will be considering Zones 3 & 4 quite soon if they haven't already. We'd all like to have a 15 minute commute into the centre but it's just not realistic any more.

angrypirate

This is not typical. Most people i know in london renting move a maximum of once every 12 months. Every now and then there are exceptions to this, but there are expections, not the general trend. Currently I have been in the flat I am in now (zone 2) for 14months and we expect to be there until late next year when we are hoping to buy in a similar area. Prior to that, I was in another flat for 18months (zone 3). Yes, we had fun looking, saw some tosh, saw some overpriced places and saw a hell of a lot of numpties (LAs). Unfortunately, Hamish is one of these gullible people who
1. believes everything he reads in the papers
2. thinks its genuinely different this time and
3. thinks that house prices can only ever go up.

mr_fishbulb

This is not typical. It has been purposely chosen to get people to read they article, and I wouldn't be surprised if "Emily" turned out to be the journalist researching places on flat-share sites.

They're hardly going to write a story that goes:

Day 1
Looked at 3 different house-shares. Liked one of them. They liked me. I move in next week.

FTBFun

I had a spell of moving once every 6 months when flatsharing (2 x flats were renovated, one was an HMO which I hated as I ended up with noisy flatmates who couldn't speak English), but my last flatshare was for nearly 3 years.

I suspect the writer hasn't got a room because of themselves rather than anything else.

Bit of an odd article by Hamish as flatsharing in London is pretty much the done thing when you're in your 20's.

PasturesNew

When I tried to flatshare, they were all young and annoying .... and they didn't like me either, so never called.

Ended up being 'chosen' by somebody absolutely desperate/about to have the bailiffs in, who (it turned out) was also cheating housing benefit as they said they lived alone... and their contract said they couldn't sublet or have pets, which was quite interesting when the landlord came round one day and there was me and a kitten.

Out,_Vile_Jelly

So can Hamish change the title of the thread to "the reality of high expectations while flat-sharing in London".

wherediditallgothen

PasturesNew wrote: »

which was quite interesting when the landlord came round one day and there was me and a kitten.

Did you hide the midgets and mayonnaise?