Is it really THAT important to own your own home?

SquatNow

Can I make a proposal... from now on we should no longer talk about the "housing ladder" we should refer to it as the "housing pyramid" and if anyone says "housing ladder" they should be corrected by someone else ASAP.

Part of the problem is people see it as a ladder. If everyone knew it was a pyramid the government would be forced into a policy change.

BTman

I see it more as a snake at the moment.

dolce_vita

I see it more as a truncated tetrahedron.

SquatNow

I was being serious... we really need to change peoples perception.

It's impossible to give anyone good advice about housing until you first ensure they understand it's all a pyramid sceme.

PasturesNew

I am now renting and it's nice to know that having paid the rent and bills, my money's mine.

I don't sit and look at things and think "must get a new one of those", "oh that needs fixing" "must go down the DIY shop and pick up ...." "must find a plumber/carpenter/electrician to get that sorted".

I had an old house and maintenance/repairs (and the insurances I had for gas, water, buildings) were probably easily chewing up £200/month overall.

Everybody's financial model is different though. When I next buy it will be a small house no more than about 20 years old.

When I bought the last one I spent a fortune:
Double glaze 10 large windows (6 feet high, 3-4 feet across); put in a boiler and central heating from new (13 radiators); fit new doors throughout; decorate; decorate again as I sucked at choosing colours; add another kitchen unit; remove bathroom and turn it back into a bedroom + shower room; new corner shower + rest of bathroom suite; new cooker; tile the whole house from front door through hallways/kitchen/room at the back (50 foot in length from one end to the other); fit new carpets; fit remote control garage door; have roof fixed (twice); have walls replastered; pay to have drains unblocked (£300 by the time they worked out how/why); paying to have the boiler fixed a few times before moving onto the british gas insurance; pay to have phone line moved; fit new taps/shower head to bathroom ... and I had a list of 100 smaller jobs that wanted doing all the time too!!!

Never ending.

icefall

In the late '80's early '90's, I lived in a succession of bedsits, (and 1 rented house) and was shocked by the awful rooms, really badly kept bathrooms, (mould like you would not believe right out there on the walls etc, but at the time I could not afford anything else) espensive meters gas/electric and phones (landlord set to extortionate rates to make extra money).

I was fleeced by every single landlord I had, no matter how nice they seemed when you met them. (This always shocked me, I cannot explain how much! I would meet a new landlord and think this one will not try to get extra money out of me for nothing, but they always turned out to do exactly that and then I would move on, feeling very let down.)

I never ever received my bond/ months rent in advance back once. (I had no parents to help me and I organized everything myself as best as I could at the time - very naively usually)

In one place my friend and I moved in, the landlady explained she was selling the house but not for a while, 4wks later we were out because she sold it and gave us a weeks notice! She must have already sold it when we moved in :eek:

The above is just the tip of the iceberg.

Being experienced business men/women they all knew exactly how to play the system, and me being young, didn't and was entirely unprepared for the extent of their many different tactics to remove as much cash from me as humanly possible.

Those years experience left me very very wary of landlords in general for ever, they say never trust a car salesman. Well the same is definitely true for private landlords.

I am a lot older, wiser and stacks more cynical these days. But I had to have a lot of experiences to get there!

Its no wonder everyone is obsessed by owning their own homes, they just want to get away from the landlords!

carolt

Poor you, icefall - sounds like you had a really bad run of experiences. Mercifully, I think your experiences are unusual - I've lived in 5 rented properties over the last 8 years and we've always got back every penny of our deposits without quarrel - even at the flat where my toddler ripped the wallpaper and where we left several stains on the carpet...

My experience has been that Letting Agents see you as nothing other than walking cheque books, payable to themselves, as they have no long-term relationship with you/responsibility, (well, they ARE estate agents...), but it's in the landlord's interest to have a good relationship with you, as void periods are expensive, and potentially, you could trash their most expensive asset, their BTL property... which could cost them a lot more than your measly deposit...

Either that, or things have improved a lot in the private rented sector since the 80's?

icefall

carolt wrote: »

Poor you, icefall - sounds like you had a really bad run of experiences. Mercifully, I think your experiences are unusual - I've lived in 5 rented properties over the last 8 years and we've always got back every penny of our deposits without quarrel - even at the flat where my toddler ripped the wallpaper and where we left several stains on the carpet...

My experience has been that Letting Agents see you as nothing other than walking cheque books, payable to themselves, as they have no long-term relationship with you/responsibility, (well, they ARE estate agents...), but it's in the landlord's interest to have a good relationship with you, as void periods are expensive, and potentially, you could trash their most expensive asset, their BTL property... which could cost them a lot more than your measly deposit...

Either that, or things have improved a lot in the private rented sector since the 80's?

I have never dealt with a letting agent, always directly with a landlord. The deposit was a lot of money to me at the time, yet probably as you say a measly deposit to the landlord, which just goes to show the same thing looks very different when you look at it from a businessman's perspective...

My point is that as a single young naive person with no support from parents the renting experience can be quite different.

In any event its nice to see that renting can be a whole lot easier for some. I assume and sincerely hope things have changed in the private renting sector a lot since then!

do_it_today!

Hi :hello:
we are toying with the idea of renting for a while in a nicer area which is too pricey to buy in at the moment rather than staying in our house. BUT I am v wary of the idea of renting yes ok you dont have to pay for the boiler to be fixed but if you end up having to wait 4 days - I'd rather just sort it out!. Also am aware of more renting horror stories than good experiences - is this true?!?!?!?

Turnbull2000

Letting agents are the Devil's spawn. Particularly Property Quarters :wall:

Got sucked into all their fees as I had never rented before. Came to a shade under £300 for credit check, passing me the landlady's contract and handing over the keys. They also expected a £70 every six months for renewal.

Landlady came to her senses and promptly dumped them.

I'm always keeping an eye out for something better and cheaper, but realise that any gains made on rent could be lost through agency fees.