How bad is renting?

Cleaver

Percy1983 wrote: »

Yes my fiancee is just fine with it, funnily she is the same age and also living with her parents... Come to think of it most of my friends are all living with parents too, maybe we can't just buy houses like the generation before us.

What age are you all?

Percy1983

Well my better half and I are both 28, the range of friends is 25-33. I will admit the 33 year old is likely to stay with his mum forever.

A few have rented and gone back due to similar reasons to me and 2 are looking at renting soon, 1 is living the american dream and 1 is in a council house.

FTBFun

Quite a lot of my friends bought as couples when they were your age, some before, so it is possible. This is in the South East too.

Cleaver

Percy1983 wrote: »

Well my better half and I are both 28, the range of friends is 25-33. I will admit the 33 year old is likely to stay with his mum forever.

A few have rented and gone back due to similar reasons to me and 2 are looking at renting soon, 1 is living the american dream and 1 is in a council house.

I'm 30 with friends in a similar age bracket to you. I would say around half rent and half have bought. It's mostly couples who have bought, I don't have any single friends (off the top of my head) who have their own place. I don't have any friends who live with their parents and they haven't for a long while. Maybe it depends very much on your circle of friends, but most people I know when to university and chose not to move home after that aged 21. Some (like me) went home for 6 months or so to sort out somewhere else to live.

My Dad is brilliant and I love him very much, but if we lived together as adults we'd kill each other.

ruggedtoast

Cleaver wrote: »

A wonderful post that demonstrates nicely the skewed view of this website. I have a friend called Ellen. She has no interest in buying a property as she doesn't want the responsibility of a mortage. She rents a lovely flat from a man called George who is also her ballroom dancing partner, despite being 30 years her senior. She coudn't give two hoots about all the stuff you're talking about.

Of course, neither her or you are 'wrong' or 'right'. She's one extreme ho doesn't care at all, you're someone who feels so strongly about property ownership that you've posted on the subject thousands of times on a niche forum over the past four years. It's a bell curve thing: you're one end, Ellen is the other and 80% of the general public are in the middle. Meaning that they buy or rent a house, have a bit of a moan about the hassles of both every now and again, but generally don't get to bothered about it all and just get on with life.

You know I'm right Mr Toast. Don't get me wrong though, it's good that there are people like you as you're completely correct in everything you say. Renting needs to be sorted out in this country. But no one really seems to care that much, hence my point.

I think my average post count is about two entries per day, including the other boards I go on here. Not that obsessional imo.

Nevertheless I do feel strongly about it. I would probably have had your opinion in my mid twenties but things change quite rapidly when you hit your 30s and start having children.

Private rental accommodation is woefully inadequate for families and all of my friends who have to rent with children hate it. It can be a nightmare finding anyone who will take you as a new tenant, and the accommodation most average earners can afford is usually on the low scale of grim.

Its very difficult to plan children's schooling on a 6 month AST as well.

I just dont think its a flippant issue.

Cleaver

ruggedtoast wrote: »

I think my average post count is about two entries per day, including the other boards I go on here. Not that obsessional imo.

Nevertheless I do feel strongly about it. I would probably have had your opinion in my mid twenties but things change quite rapidly when you hit your 30s and start having children.

Private rental accommodation is woefully inadequate for families and all of my friends who have to rent with children hate it. It can be a nightmare finding anyone who will take you as a new tenant, and the accommodation most average earners can afford is usually on the low scale of grim.

Its very difficult to plan children's schooling on a 6 month AST as well.

I just dont think its a flippant issue.

I agree with everything you write, I really do. But I just don't think most people are as passionate as you about this issue. And I wasn't having a dig at you posting on here (I think my post count is greater than yours), I was just pointing out that this forum has about 20 users and sometimes has half a dozen people looking at it. It's a very niche thing. We just have to accept that most people just get on with life and either buy or rent a place, and probably will do moving forward. Hence why nothing really changes all that much and probably won't in the future. Everyone is generally okay with the status quo.

The one thing I disagree with you about is that most rental accommodation is on the 'low scale of grim'. It insn't. Most rental properties are fine, hence why most people don't really moan that much about where they live.

abankerbutnotafatcat

I lived in Denmark where, like Germany, renting is more usual and there is a bad side to the stability there in that the rental market is less fluid - good properties are in such demand they tend to go by word of mouth. It's because the costs of moving out are prohibitive - we got lucky and because we were only in our place a year and were friendly with the caretaker we weren't charged to have the floors sanded which is normal upon re-letting so it was just a case of painting all walls and we were charged c£1500 whereas with the sanding it could have been double that. In the UK you may be facing a couple of hundred quid for cleaning but unless you're very unlucky (or very dirty/destructive) it won't be enough to make you reconsider moving.

There is no reason why renting couldn't be a comfortable, long-term housing solution here in the right circumstances. I am a LL and the house was my former home so it is decorated to a very high standard (German appliances, solid wood floors etc). I leave the tenants alone unless they have a problem. It annoys me when they phone to complain that the shower isn't working and it turns out to need descaling. I point out that London is a very hard water area and that descaling needs to be part of their cleaning routine. They look at me blankly, i sigh and give them a new shower head. However, I rented myself for six months recently and it was everything bad about renting including £180 being 'stolen' from my deposit despite the flat being cleaner when I handed it back than when I had got it. It made me really want to buy. But if I wanted a long term rental I think I would have been more choosy about the LL/MA situation.

chewmylegoff

Graham_Devon wrote: »

I really fail to understand your point here.

Have a look at the house buying and selling board and how many rental problems threads there are. This stresses many people out, landlord and tenant alike.

I don't understand why you would flippantly suggest all this makes zero difference to happiness.

Having access to ice cream is great, but for the people who haven't got lighting in stair wells, and have small children in houses with windows which won't shut, holes in rooves etc and it's approaching winter, frankly telling them they should be happy as they have access to ice cream is absurd and insulting. It might be OK for cleaver in cleaver world, but sometimes I think you need to look at problems people face instead of suggesting life is good cus of fluffy bread on various threads. Begining to sound like some sort of hippy!

i have rented for about 10 years on an off and never had any issues. my current landlord fixes anything that breaks within a couple of working days, and leaves us alone the rest of the time. most of my friends rent places and i've haven't heard any horror stories from any of them.

whilst the rental sector clearly is not perfect, and there are things that could be done to improve it, to suggest that it doesn't function nationwide in entirety because there are a couple of hundred complaints every year on an MSE board designed as a place where people can go to seek advice about problems with their landlord is rather silly as it is not a representative cross section which can be extrapolated to give a view of the sector as a whole.

further, i expect there are plenty of people who own houses who experience just the same problems - there are many in leasehold flats who have issues with their freeholder not carrying out repairs, extorting them through the service charge etc, and many who although they have bought a house, cannot afford to carry out basic repairs on it.

basically some people are d!cks, which means that some landlords are d!cks, but the majority of them are fine and fulfil their obligations to a reasonable standard.

ruggedtoast

Cleaver wrote: »

I agree with everything you write, I really do. But I just don't think most people are as passionate as you about this issue. And I wasn't having a dig at you posting on here (I think my post count is greater than yours), I was just pointing out that this forum has about 20 users and sometimes has half a dozen people looking at it. It's a very niche thing. We just have to accept that most people just get on with life and either buy or rent a place, and probably will do moving forward. Hence why nothing really changes all that much and probably won't in the future. Everyone is generally okay with the status quo.

The one thing I disagree with you about is that most rental accommodation is on the 'low scale of grim'. It insn't. Most rental properties are fine, hence why most people don't really moan that much about where they live.

I mean renting with children. A letting agent will not usually accept that children can share, regardless of their age.

That means one bed flats are out of the question for a single woman who is pregnant. She has to find the money for two bedrooms somehow

A working couple with two pre-school aged kids in London will need to rent a three bedroom house. Thats a whopping amount of money to find every month.

A cramped 3 bed mid terrace in Woolwich, one of the the worst places in the world, costs in excess of £1000 a month. Also, check out how many nice family homes on Rightmove have the words "no children, pets or dss" under them.

I dont approve of people going on benefits when they could work but you can see why people decide it simply isnt worth it if they have to factor in housing costs and perilous 6 month ASTs.

Percy1983

Cleaver wrote: »

I'm 30 with friends in a similar age bracket to you. I would say around half rent and half have bought. It's mostly couples who have bought, I don't have any single friends (off the top of my head) who have their own place. I don't have any friends who live with their parents and they haven't for a long while. Maybe it depends very much on your circle of friends, but most people I know when to university and chose not to move home after that aged 21. Some (like me) went home for 6 months or so to sort out somewhere else to live.

My Dad is brilliant and I love him very much, but if we lived together as adults we'd kill each other.

Interesting point about uni, from my said group none of us went.

By all means with I had found my better half sooner we would be further along, it is correct those who do own are the ones who have been in the longer relationships.

I suppose with me we have come this far so to stick with it a little longer for the better endgame makes sense, I want to move out but would end shooting myself in the foot if I did.

By all means to be a 28 year old male living with parents is very different now than it was in the 70's, in many respects in the most intelligent thing to do these days.