Owning your own home

If you buy a place that needs £20k worth of work that loses £20k in value, and which needs a £12k lease extension within 7 years, then you probably make all sorts of bad financial decisions and shouldn't be allowed to manage your own money.

Also, even in that example, losing £5k a year, you'd be up on me renting.

One important point in jeez's example is the purchase date of 2005 which was in the middle of theproperty boom period. 2 years later was when the nosedive started.