Is buying a house a good investment?

Smalltownhypocrite

How much did you spend on these houses?

Surely they needed some work doing in 10+ years of living there.

Maahes

Tabieth said:

Depends what you mean by investment. I’ve just bought again after a (too long) period of renting, I move out of my rental flat and into my house on Friday. The house is lovely, but needed a replastering (done), a new kitchen (done), and a new bathroom (being done in April). It’s a lovely little terrace house in a very nice area and it’s perfect for me. (It’s certainly nicer than the rental flat which, while very expensive and in a nice area, is soulless and horrible). 

My mortgage is £500 a month cheaper than my rent. My council tax band has dropped several bands, my utility bills will be significantly cheaper (the rental flat is electric only with a dreadful boiler). And I’m paying into my mortgage / owning my home, not into someone else’s mortgage. 

I consider all of that a very good investment. My house may or may not appreciate in value over the years. I suspect that it will but that’s not my focus. My focus is having a safe, nice, comfortable, happy place to live that I’ll eventually own outright / be mortgage free. The thought of renting after retirement is a scary one. That’s my idea of investment - not buying and flipping. 

Very, very much this. By buying a property, even if it doesn't gain a penny in value, I've invested in my future and my family's future by providing them stability and security. I've given my (neurodiverse) children the option to live out their lives if they choose to, in a mortgage and rent free house. 

I was spending £25k a year to rent, that's a crazy waste of money paying somebody else’s mortgage

BungalowBel

I am not a mathematician, so this will be very simple.

We bought a house for £3k on a mortgage in 1976, kept it for forty years (spent money on it to improve it), twenty years mortgage-free,  and sold it in 2015 for £148k.

We then bought a bungalow for £138k cash in 2015, spent about £30k on it  with various repairs and improvements.  It would now sell for around £250k.

We bought a flat to rent out, for £85k cash, also in 2015, spent nothing at all on it bar a few small repairs (less than £1k), got the rent per month and sold it for £125k last September.  Obviously we had things like service charge and insurance and tax  to pay on it over the time.

So yes, I would say over the long term, buying a house is a good investment.  Not necessarily in the short term.