How can people afford to rent?

WibblyGirly

As previous posts say, you need to be working full time really. When I was single working full time, I earned just over £1000 a month and lived in a house share costing £425 (not including food). Ideally I'd say you need to have about £28-30k between you to rent somewhere that is about £600 a month.

sheff6107

Annoying thing is on a £200000 mortgage we wouldn't be paying what we would be paying in rent in a month

True, but you need £10, £20, 30k in savings.

Cakeguts

If you want to rent or buy you will both need to have full time jobs. So your choice is either both find full time jobs or continue to work part time and stay where you are.

mrginge

I find there is a general lack of understanding with a lot of younger people these days.

For their benefit, this is the way life works -
Stuff costs money
Job pays money
Better job pays more money
If you want better stuff, get better job.

Job first
Stuff second

Rosemary7391

I'd imagine you could afford a room pretty much anywhere except central London. Try places like https://www.spareroom.co.uk - not sure how well this works for couples, but I managed to rent a room when I was earning about £9k/year just on my own. If you want a flat to yourself, I expect one of you will need to work full time unless you're a bit north.

singhini

OP, I sometimes look back at my life and think what was I doing getting a mortgage, I should have just stayed at home and lived with my parents (theres no shame in living with people who love you IMHO).

When I took my mortgage I borrowed £125,000 at a monthly repayment of £850 for 30 years. Sounds simple enough but lets just think about this....... Ive just committed myself to the next 30 years of life on an asset that could go down aswell as up. However for the next 30 years I have to make sure I pay 30 years of mortgage aswell as 30 years of Gas, electricity, water, council tax, repairs to the house, refurbishments to the fixtures and fittings, mow the lawn, pay for building insurance, contents insurance and hope interest rates don't go up over that time and I hope I actually have a job for 30 years to pay for all of this.

Boy do I miss those words my mum used to shout to me............ "son your dinner is ready"

OP try to stay positive.

theartfullodger

PPPv2 wrote: »

...................... So how do people get on the rent? .....

Quite a few by claiming benefits: CTC, WTC, HB/LHA. HB is claimed by about 1million working people: They might not get full HB/LHA payment but they get some...

This is a wonderful wheeze for all those capitalistic employers so they don;t end up having to pay fair wages, and the dumb tax-payer makes up the difference...

See what you would get by running these simple checks against a likely rental....
https://www.gov.uk/benefits-calculators

....Annoying thing is on a £200000 mortgage we wouldn't be paying what we would be paying in rent in a month. ....

Ah, that's capitalism for you: Mind you, if interest rates were what they were some years ago ( 17% !!) you'd find renting would be much cheaper than a mortgage

AdrianC

PPPv2 wrote: »

Me and my girlfriend are currently living at her mum's. It's ok but I don't have no space, currently got most of my clothes in my car along with few other bits. Been to look at a couple of places that we can afford but don't earn the 30x times rent in wages.

3x, not 30x...

So they don't even consider us. I early with my part time contract £7k. Girlfriend with her part time is£9k. She has very limited of over time. Yet with me I'm expected to do more hours. I Do like £12-14k a year.

OK, so before overtime, that's a total income of £16k - £1,330/mo. On that, you're not going to be paying any tax worth mentioning.

After overtime, you're earning £21k-23k, and paying more-or-less no tax. Even at the top end of that, there's only about a £1,500/year tax between you. So that's about £1,800 in your pockets every month.

Where do you live? Even in London, you should be able to find a double room in a houseshare and still have a grand a month left without any difficulty at all.

Annoying thing is on a £200000 mortgage we wouldn't be paying what we would be paying in rent in a month. Not really sure why I typed the above

Nor am I. You really, really, really, REALLY wouldn't. Monthly repayments on a £200k 25yr mortgage at 3% are damn near a grand a month. Not that any lender would even contemplate almost 10x joint salary... Before you consider all the other bills you'd be liable for in owning a property. And, of course, even a 5% deposit would be pretty much your girlfriend's entire annual salary.

kingfisherblue

Sorry, but I'm going to echo other posters - you need to work more hours. My daughter stayed at home (paying me board) and her partner did the same at his parents, while they both worked hard to save some money. Her partner worked seven days a week after leaving university - weekdays in his 'proper' job and weekends in a part time job that he had when at uni. They saved as much as they could. He gave up his weekend job after a year.

We live in the North West, so house prices are lower than many other areas. They wanted to buy, so they saved every penny they could. They bought a three bedroom semi with a decent deposit, but had to then save for gutting it and replacing all fixtures and fittings, because it was in a poor state. Admittedly they bought it at a decent price, but it's in quite a nice area. They are overpaying the mortgage at the moment, but rented houses on the same street are around £600 a month.

Both still work hard. Neither are in high paid jobs - they earn less than £30,000 between them. They have a daughter now, and my daughter reduced her hours for about eighteen months. She's starting a new job next month, working 37 hours a week. Both want to move to a bigger house in a better area, possibly in the next town, but they won't do that until they have saved a lot more money. They're both young, in their twenties, but want to be mortgage free by the time they are forty.

The point is, you need to be prepared to work hard to earn enough money for the things that you want in life. Both working part time might give you enough leisure time, but to get a place of your own, rented or mortgaged, you need to increase your hours and start saving.

PPPv2

Around here Oxfordshire I live in a expensive part. girlfriends parent's got v lucky with house prices and are not in position to help. Christmas temp work is all taken up or were near similar hours to my contracted so no go. For time being we are gonna stay with her parents which I will struggle with. Gf has a couple of interviews for good paying jobs so fingers crossed. I've applied for hundreds of jobs. I have no prob with hard work just need the job to do it