Owning your own home

sorry wrong pda

bmmf, I believe money used as rent on a flat you live in for a year or two or three, is money wasted. The way we rent in the UK isn't the same as in continental europe which doesn't seem to have the stigma to long term renting we have, where they can genuinely live in rented accomodation for a long term, rather than the short term mentality we have here.
If people rented long term here, and had the sort of rent security they have in europe (willing to be corrected on this) then renting isn't money pissed away its the creation of a home.

What do you mean by Europe, have you ever lived there? Because I have, In several places of Europe, and it always seemed like wasting money everywhere i HAD TO PAY dorrah for something not mine. London is the 1st place I live that renting actually works, has agencies everywhere.... go and try to rent a house anywhere in the Mediterranean countries directly through a private... then we'll talk ;)

Or in Sweden... good luck!

Yeah the rent is cheap, but there's a black market in contracts because of a lack of properties. So you get people paying the price of a flat just for a first-hand rental contract.

want fries with that?

sorry wrong pda

thought so, get back to your prep Jamie! ;)

Despite the fact that mine and my girlfiend's combined income is... should be enough to live very comfortably on, last time I applied for a Mortgage I was declined on the grounds that I'd been over my overdraft limit within the last 6 months.

I went over it again last month by a hundred quid or so for a couple of days.

They won't extend it, and charged me £75 for the indiscretion.

So I know there's little point in applying for another mortgage before at least next summer.

Owning your own home

... it's not just about rent Vs mortgage...

you'd have to change your forum name, too.

Ha Ha!

Seriously, the costs of owning are far more than comparing the mortgage payments with rent. All the additional costs and responsibility each month need to be considered. One off costs too, such as Stamp Duty, which alone could cost a years worth of rent!

If you are looking at buying as an investment or to stop 'throwing money away on rent', I would reconsider. If you are wanting to set up a home and are thinking longer term - minimum 5 years, then look into buying.

• This is still being bashed out in the High Court between the OFT and a consortium of banks.
  
  

All claims are on hold until this is resolved. Personally, i'll be looking at 1k+ reclaim over the last 6 years!

http://www.londonfgss.com/thread22487.html

Ask them for it back. The charges are de facto penalties, and as such are unlawful*, and furthermore constitute unfair terms, under the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999.

• This is still being bashed out in the High Court between the OFT and a consortium of banks.
  
  

Yeah I know. I tried that with all of my charges (as did millions of others) but I was too slow. They won't have it. I got a letter stating that they're not budging an inch till the appeal is over. F*ckers.

@ nuknow I haven't lived in continental europe, would love to live in barcelona or Berlin, but haven't pulled finger out, and as I stated I'm willing to be proved wrong on my extrapolated thoughts/impressions.
@ BMMF, no I've never not had a roof over my head, and I own the council flat I grew up in 30yrs man and boy and all that. If people are happy with renting and continuing to do so as my mother did for the twenty odd years before she bought her flat for small beer, then so be it. But seeing my friends viewing patterns, staying long term renting in one place doesn't seem a viable option, so constantly moving, looking for a new place to live, pulling up the cash for a new deposit, to me seems to be like pissing money away when you could attempt to buy someplace and piss all your money into it.

I will be becoming a landlord soon so will get back to you on the whole risk/reward thing in due course...

Don't get me started on the whole issue of buying social housing stock...

I won't if you won't

BMMF. The issue is and was with the sale of social housing stock.

BMMF. The issue is and was with the sale of social housing stock.

Someone had to be willing to buy it in the first place.

Always someone willing to *buy *it. The issue (for me) was always whether someone ie Local Authorities should sell it.

^^It's chicken and egg. Local authorities would have been less inclined to sell if there hadn't been so many working-class sell-outs under Thatcher/Porter's thrall. Exploitation of Tory-generated aspirations.

@Tiswas - less than market prices, but then again, still too much for many tenants, and only comfortably affordable for those who could consider freeing up the social stock for someone more needy.

I wouldn't class my mother as a working class sell out, but she does have certain materialistic aspirations, I'm probably no different. and she did buy it at under market value, which allowed me to actually be able to buy it from her without pushing myself into stupid levels of debt, or saving for time immemorial.
I don't think it was ever comfortable for her to pay the mortgage but she did because she wanted the security of it I suppose and something to show at the end for her time over here.

"Working class sell-out" is a phrase that I have not heard for some time. "Traitors to your class" was another poular term of derision in the 1970s and early 1980s.

The concept of class loyalty always struck me as rather bizarre.

Perhaps I am too much of a cycnic. I certainly have no loyalty to my resoundingly middle class roots.

Perhaps I am too much of a cycnic.

nowhere near cynical enough.

@Corny - I'm not trying to vilify your mother in particular, but she is part of a culturally regrettable phenomenon, as far as I'm concerned. Typical of local authorities to try and sort out their budgets by making the socially disadvantaged in their 'care', so to speak, pay for it; knowing full well that many would use the process to gain an asset rather than a permanent home, which in turn sees councils having to manage less stock... and a rise in homelessness... and the interests of lease-holders slowly eroding the foothold of tenants on their own estates... etc...

So her life was maybe less comfortable due to the strain of a mortgage, but it was for security...

... and yet I know plenty of pensioners who've been secure for the 40+ years they've paid their council rents. A couple have died this year. And now there's a new family in the flat - the kind of disenfranchised family that might otherwise be crammed into a parents' home, in care, queuing away their lives trying to sort housing benefit for a private rental, etc.

We pay council rent. My wife is in a similar position to you. There was a succession of tenancy from her mother, when she was suddenly in a position to live elsewhere (her partner was part of a lottery-winning syndicate). We feel entirely secure paying rent, other than the constant spectre of Islington Council or Homes For Islington or whatever fucking money-grabbing organisation has control trying to push through some kind of wholesale sell-off of the estate. But as long as the majority here are tenants rather than lease-holders, things are unlikely to happen on that front any time soon.

@ cliveo - you speak from a position of privilege. There's nothing bizarre about the notion of class loyalty from where I'm standing. Divide and rule, init.

full rep to BMMF. i'm alongside you all the way, just wish i rented off the council instead of a private landlord. oh, and HfI are cunts, i agree 100%.

The old dear downstairs has a carer come for a few hours a day. If that arrangement won't work, it'll be a place in a state care-home, but they're a fucking dying breed as well.

And the community (on the estate) helps out too.

@ BMMF, I know where your coming from, I didn't understand at the time why she wanted to buy and to a certain extent still don't. Though I've been a recipient of the right to buy/right to sell initiative, I'd much rather the councils don't sell off their housing stock otherwise local residents get priced out of their neighbourhood as the monocultural gentrification of london continues on apace.

You're an inside agent ;)