Might as well quit smoking and have kids (Buying vs Renting)

Member Name: thequy

Product:	Buying vs Renting
Date:	06/04/02 (291 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Satanists - and worse

Disadvantages: At least you've got company

Things were much simpler when I was at college. The Rent/Buy dilemma didn't exist back then because no-one seriously expects a student to buy unless daddy is a popstar or robs banks for a living, in which case prepare to be the abnormal outsider. Enter the working world however and it's a paradigm shift as Buy becomes the new black and Renting turns into a past-time for the deranged.

"Oh ye of little sense," Buyers sigh, eyes rolling towards the heavens in exasperated disbelief. "Can you not see that you are lining your evil landlord's pockets with gold whereas your hard earned wonga could be steadily accumulating in a tidy nest egg for your future? Do you not yearn for the freedom to have yellow polka dots on your walls or a pet iguana as company for the dog you must hide every time the aforementioned despot pays a visit, letting himself in with his own keys? Your home should be your castle, dammit!"

Cowed before the force of this impermeable logic, we Renters mumble something about 'freedom from responsibility' or 'mobility' and shuffle off to stand in the corner with a tall pointy hat on.

Hang on a sec. Dunce? Us? Well, I'm not standing for it. Firstly cos it's easier to type when seated and secondly because there are occasions when renting does make sense.


SMALL PRINT
This is based on my own particular set of circumstances which may or may not match your own, depending on whether or not you're also called thequy. There will be an early redemption penalty for not reading to the end. Anyone clicking NU will be hunted down and forced to read a mortgage contract from beginning to the bitter end. Further terms and conditions apply. Please see below for details.

Oh and I actually intend to switch sides. But like I said, there's a time and a place and I'm anticipating that mine will come - just not yet.


THE MONEY
><br>Probably the most important aspect is to do with the green folding stuff that makes the world go round. The core benefit of Buying is that you're gradually increasing your net worth and will one day be the proud owner of a five or six figure asset (if seven and female, please leave your phone number in the comments). Once on the property ladder i.e. even while you're still paying off the mortgage, there is the opportunity to make capital gains. These can be mouthwateringly humungous if you choose the right area. A guy I play squash with bought a flat in the centre of Manchester for £85,000 a couple of years ago. The average value in his building is now £140,000. The crafty so-and-so told me this just as I was about to serve and it lost me the game.

If you rent then any such gains belong to your landlord. The flip side of the equation is that there is no risk of falling into negative equity (where the value of your home falls beneath that of your mortgage) but the professional view seems to be that the housing market is in good shape and growing.

Whether the market crashes or booms, a sizeable chunk of your monthly income goes straight into your landlord's pocket which turns out to be something of a bottomless pit.

It's clear that buying is beneficial in the long-term and I have no argument with that. However, taking cash-flow into consideration sheds new light on the matter. My rent is currently £200 a month including council tax and water (Hah! Read and weep, Londoners). This is an excellent deal especially given the location, a tidy residential area in South Manchester. A transition to Buyer status would drastically reduce my disposable income: mortgage = £3-400 plus insurance, council tax etc, and before any of that even starts there are the not insignificant set-up costs and commissions. In a worst case scenario, I'd have to accept a cut AND move to a less desirable location.

For th
e first time in my life, money is not a problem as such. All student debts are gradually being cleared and yet I can eat out, go to the pictures, go clubbing, buy records (as with any addiction, costly), buy clothes, go on holiday, run a car in a needlessly high insurance group etc etc. You know, all the silly little things that penny-watching as a student never allowed or at least not regularly. I'm quite enjoying myself as it goes and I am very, very reluctant to give any of that up. In return for maintaining my lifestyle as I like it, I am willing to forego the possibility of making capital gains until I get promoted or move to another company. Ya see, both of those scenarios would mean a noticeable rise in income which would then fund the switch to being a home owner. This is also a useful motivator during the working day (doesn't stop me from checking out Dooyoo, erm, occasionally though).


SHARING
It is possible to own and share but from what I've seen the two rarely make happy bedfellows unless you also literally share a bed - a rather important decision in its own right. Dooyoo category anyone? For me, sharing is a quirky side-effect of renting and one that I'll look back on with fond memories when I have to leave it behind.

Sharing with mates is a test of friendship at the best of times whilst sharing with strangers is undoubtedly a lottery. You've probably all heard the horror stories of the flatmate from hell who rang up a 4 figure phone bill 'talking' to Luscious Linda and Randy Mandy (who incidentally are always based on another continent to further increase the charge. Not that I'd know but so I've been told honest guv I was somewhere else at the time and have several reliable witnesses of good character please you've got to believe me no-one else does). Then there're the toenail clippings in the sink, the sacrificed goats with each full moon, the dodgy 'mates' cal
ling round at unsociable hours of the night. And so on and so forth.

My own worst experience came from quite an unexpected source. You ever heard the saying about how the most powerful lies have an element of truth in them? Well, the 'worst' people often have a touch of niceness to them. Out and out nastiness I can deal with - there is *no-one* who will walk over me in my own house (a touch of irony in the 'own' perhaps?). However Miss X was just sweet enough that I didn't have the heart to tell her she was doing my effin' head in and could she please, Please, PLEASE leave me alone.

Basically, she invaded my space. Big-time. It started off as innocuous suggestions that we share food costs, she cooks, I wash-up. Then she'd come into my bedroom uninvited and tell me about her life ambitions in great detail, oblivious to my repeated yawns before I plucked up the nerve to chuck her out. Sigh, this British politeness can be such a burden sometimes. I mentioned in passing that I'd pulled a muscle playing squash and whaddaya know, she's a masseuse-in-training and taking my protests that I was fine to mean "Please do", off she went. From then on, it was a desperate battle to avoid all eye contact lest she pounce and then I'd be caught like a rabbit in the headlights until an opening came and I could gratefully disappear into my room.

I suspect that if you'd told me all this was headed my way back in my teenage years of longing for the fairer sex, I would have thanked you profusely and asked if you wanted, like, my soul in return. As it was, the price to pay would have made Faust think he struck it lucky in the summer sales. Conversation - and there was lots of it - was mind-numbingly tedious, repetitive and Me, Me, Me. She was one of those who'd been there, seen it, done that, but higher, faster and more times than anything you?d ever experienced. Although the other two
didn't get the massage treatment <<shudder>> or the offer to cook, the net effect was that all three of us became prisoners in our own bedrooms whenever she was about. The other girl in the house was considering moving out anyway to get a place with her bit of trouser but Miss X caused them to take the first place they found. When she finally moved on, the other survivor and I signed an agreement that maybe Satanists weren't such a bad idea as anyone regularly occupied with farm animals should at least be light on the conversation.

It's actually quite funny now thinking back and when I consider the good, the bad and the ugly from 7 years of sharing (4 with friends, 3 with random people), I would not hesitate to do the whole lot again if there wasn't the option of picking and choosing (assuming there was the option of time-travel in the first place).

Actually, can I get back to you on that?

To sum up those 7 years:
1) A couple of nightmares
2) Some gems whose phone numbers I'll always have
3) The vast majority I didn't socialise with much but didn't get on each other's nerves either. Live and let live kind of thing.

Logically, this isn't atypical and most renters are also likely to have 2) and 3) outnumber 1). This is no bad thing as believe me, even the seemingly mediocre 3) is a welcome state of affairs. Unless you've got lighthouse keeper in your blood, it's nice to have people about the place, nice to have someone to shout hello to when you get in from work, nice to have someone to put your feet up with from time to time. As for the ever important ££, bills of all sorts are instantly reduced to a fraction of their original size.

Housemates can also be an invaluable way of widening your social circles outside of work or college life, especially if you're in a new city. If they're locals then getting acquainted with your new surroundings
is given a big helping hand. If they're not locals, then have fun discovering your new home (and I don't mean your accommodation) together.


RESPONSIBILITY
If you too think that Paintbrush is a software application and putting up a shelf requires intense concentration and months of planning, then there is a seductive attraction to having someone else worry about all this. Besides fulfilling the role of house doctor, furniture, washing machine, hoover, fridge/freezer are all the landlord's responsibility. Ours is also a dab hand at mowing the lawn, which immediately put him in my good books.

The downside with appliances and furniture is that landlords tend to get you the most basic, skankiest model available and I must admit there are times when I lovingly stroke Dysons on catalogue pages (is it geekish to think they're well funky?) in the way I used to yearn for toys as a kid. However, it's a small price to pay for putting off a shed load of responsibility. When I grow up, I'll let you know ;-)



PRIVACY
There is a perceived threat of nosy landlords letting themselves in unannounced and uninvited. I've never had this problem and think of it as being no more risky than buying a house only to find out you have the archetypal neighbours from hell. I can't remember if there's a specific law that says they have to give you so much notice before showing up, but you can certainly have it inserted in your contract that they must give you x hours notice, unless it's an emergency.


OWNERSHIP/ FREEDOM OF CHOICE
Things like pets and wall colour can usually be resolved with forward planning and/or persuasive argument (usually of the monetary kind). If you know you want something before moving in, make it a condition of you moving in. If you're already there, indicate that it's so important to you that you would consider moving out. How much weight either ro
ute carries depends on how desperate the landlord is to let the property or how good you've been as tenants. If your rent is always on time and you keep a tidy, clean house, then your landlord will probably want to keep you. Good tenants are just as good finds as good landlords. In fact, most home improvements will be welcomed by the landlord as it makes the place that much more attractive to future tenants. Fair enough you won't benefit from it in the long term, but that depends on how long you're planning on staying put so at least you have a choice.

NB: it's highly recommended you get written confirmation of anything they agree to.

If they refuse to budge, then it's decision time on just how badly you want it - does it warrant moving somewhere else? While this might put you off somewhere in particular, it's not really an argument against renting per se is it?

There is an inherent risk with Renting in that, having given you sufficient notice, the landlord can evict you for no fault of your own. As I see it, possible but very, very rare. It's landlords who worry about the other end of the contract walking away.


MOBILITY
Talking of walking away, you can up and leave within a given period of time (usually a month). If you were tied to a mortgage, then changing jobs or deciding you'd prefer the Down Under sun to the North-West rain is made that much harder.

[I've put that in as an obvious advantage of renting but on the other hand it shouldn't dissuade you from Buying, if you see what I mean]


THIS WHOLE OP'S A BIT BIASED, N'EST-CE PAS?
The category asks for my experiences and it so happens they've mainly been very good ones. I don't doubt things do go very horribly wrong for some Renters but as with much else it's the luck of the draw and the only fundamental disadvantage I can see is that it feeds your landlord's mortgage a
s opposed to your own. Even this can be viewed as a short-term price to pay for immediate cash-flow benefits. As for the capital gains I could be missing out on before I make the switch, the operative word is 'could'. In the short-term, they are a potential but not guaranteed advantage to owning. Buying a home then is similar to having kids, learning to operate a paintbrush or quitting the weed. Grown-up, responsible and something I really, truly, hand on heart scout's honour want to do. Only, mañana - such a beautiful word isn't it?

Summary: