Should you rent or buy ?

Buying a property is probably the biggest financial decision you’ll ever have to make. How do you know whether it’s the right decision for you right now – or whether you’d be better off renting instead ?

Many people already know that as rented accommodation gets more and more expensive, very often it is actually cheaper to buy your home and pay a mortgage. This has put many people into a quandary about how to actually go about it.

HERE is a site that discusses this subject and tries to advise about which is the best way to go for you.

A very cogent question Papa.

At the moment I am renting a flat that is quite close to the school where I work, and that is good, but I must say that I would love to eventually own my own home.

Up until recently this has been a far-distant possibility with the large deposits that are needed for first-time buyers, but recently this has eased off a bit and now we are getting more and better mortgages available than have been for a very long time.

I guess I am just going to have to try and trap my boyfriend into marriage as working married couples still get the best deals that are going.

( I hope he doesn't read this ).

I honestly cannot see why the Brits are so fond of owning the property they live in as over in America renting is far more popular than buying.

I guess that the protected rents divisions in America encourage many more ordinary folks to go into rented accommodation than in buying their homes.

I blame Thatcher for starting the buying frenzy amongst the British sub-primers as with her discounted selling off of so much council stock we finished up with a shortage of rentable accommodation and a lot of people who got in over their heads with mortgage debt.

Yeah, they call them "the projects" over there and there is no worse slums or ghettos than the American projects.

We really don't need to employ those tactics over here as by watching America we can see that they don't work.

I am sorry if that sounds rather negative, but I have to be honest and say that I have no clue about the best way to solve such housing problems.

Many cleverer people than me have studied this problem and cannot come up with a workable solution, so why should I worry about it ?

Someone should worry about it Angie !

Mind you, it seems that wherever special buildings projects have been completed in order to produce - as we call it - "affordable rented accommodation" we always see these estates becoming sink-holes for deprivation and crime.

Once any such estate is created, the housing experts seem keen on keeping the same bottom end demographics together and with this kind of social engineering, ghetto-conditions are born and thrive.