Why buy one? Rent your home instead
The budget was announced today with more paper bag than punch.
Dubbed “Spreadsheet Phil”, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced what appeared to be his pièce de résistance this afternoon.
Stamp duty will be cut for the first £300,000 of homes valued at £500,000. So, saving first time buyers £5,000 in tax. This comes after the Chancellor was pressured by a number of his colleagues who publicly bullied him into highlighting housing in his Budget.
The number of first time buyers was at an all time low last winter. The number of young people able to purchase a home whilst in their twenties narrowed once again, unsurprisingly, whilst the length of the loan for first time buyers now exceeds forty years.
Forty-nine years and five months, for women (FT, 2017).
That’s probably taking into account my baby-making facility, and the time in the grey economy with my domestic, yet free work for “the family” that I pay a premium to have.
But my point isn’t about how hard it is to be a woman, or how tempting owning a home is today.
It’s an argument for why we need to own property? In the light of Brexit, it’s clear that people of my generation need to get more creative about how we access the rest of the world, whilst also holding true to our traditions, like owning a home.
If we’re to remain internationally facing, more and more of us will find ourselves absorbing cultures we’d never thought we’d do in school. Traveling the world, won’t just be for a whim or a gap yah but out of necessity to survive.
I’m not downplaying the role of the UK, but rather arguing we need to raise the profile of our networking capability. In doing so, we won’t be tied down to one career, one city, one dream, we’ll be the shape shifters of the future.
So we need to culturally move away from the statistic lives our 61 year old chancellor is telling us we should aspire to want.
In a world of uncertainty, one thing I’m sure of is my ability to develop my own community. And it won’t be confined to geography.
So rent!
Renting can be scary, get to know your rights and the laws protecting you. Chances are you’ll have a varied selection of assets in the long run that will stand the test of time beyond one property you struggled to buy and maintain in your 20s.
Renting gives you flexibility to live anywhere in the world, whilst being self determined to make it your home with longer tenancies and better regulations to protect you and landlords.
Social mobility happens when you see your life improving every time you wake up.
The beauty of not having a mortgage is that as you become wealthier (or not) you can choose to invest in your home or prioritise other parts of your life.
And don’t just take my word for it. The scandinavians have been doing it for years. Sweden, a place where renting is seen more favourably sees a more stable rental market, whilst landlords are more open to negotiate (Generation Rent, 2014).
Changing the status of the symbol of real estate is more important than ever before. Act now, before our chancellor deprioritises our generation again.
References:
Financial Times: 2017, http://bit.ly/TooHotForYoungBuyers
Generation Rent: 2014, http://bit.ly/SwedishRenting
