6 Reasons I’m Postponing Buying A Home & Renting Again Insteadfeatured

If you follow me on Twitter you may have cottoned onto the fact that I’m currently flat hunting! Unfortunately, despite my deposit-saving mission, I’m not yet looking for a flat to buy, but rather a flat to rent.

Although I moved in with my parents a year and a half ago with the intention of never renting again, it’s not like I knew how things would pan out.

Living with my parents has been great. It’s not only given me the opportunity to save a ton of money, it enabled me to save an emergency fund and quit a job that I hated without another lined up, spend time with my family, and learn a lot about myself. However, Jake and I are really keen to start living together and as I’m about to explain in this post, I’ve decided I’m not ready to buy a home just yet.

The money I’ve saved isn’t going anywhere. It’s still my deposit savings fund, it’s going to continue to grow month on month, and I won’t be splashing it on fast cars and fast men. I might even go ahead and buy a home in a year’s time! But I’ve realised there is no rush. And, although I’d be lying if I said that rapidly rising house prices weren’t making me sweat, saving for a deposit is a marathon, not a race.

So here are just a few reasons I’ve decided to put home ownership on the back burner and start renting again:

I don’t need to be a home owner to love where I live

For a while I thought that home ownership was my ultimate goal, but I recently realised that I just want to make a place my home. While there are some considerable limitations when renting, (and we won’t even go into the risks associated with shitty landlords), I don’t need to own the place I’m living in order to be happy. Instead, I need to be living in a space that makes me happy with a person or people that make me happy. Home ownership is still something I’d like to achieve in the next few years but it’s time to sloooow down and take things as they come.

I need to sort out my career first

Until I quit my last job, I’d become so obsessed with saving for a deposit in a short space of time that I was working myself into the grave. I was scared of leaving the job I hated because I didn’t want to ruin my chances of getting a mortgage. Since many mortgage lenders will only lend to people who have been in the same job for a certain period of time, I told myself I’d be best off sticking around while saving/house hunting and buggering off once I’d bought a place.

That was not a healthy or sensible attitude to have. I soon realised it would be FAR more logical to sort my career out first and find a company I could see myself staying with before taking out the largest loan imaginable and tying myself to a property.

Thankfully, I’m now in a job that makes me happy. It’s still early days though and the sensible part of my brain is telling me that buying a house now would be a bit like getting engaged to someone I’d only known for 3 weeks. So I’m going to chill out, enjoy the role, and see what happens.

I don’t want to buy a home I’ll be desperate to move out of

Despite increasing my salary twice since I first started saving for a home, I’m still facing considerable restrictions when it comes to actually being able to afford a house that I want. I’m not expecting to live in Didsbury or Chorlton or even my home town of Sale, but I’d like to live in an area where I can feel safe walking to the shop at night and where the streets aren’t paved with litter.

I also don’t want to panic-buy a property just because it’s the only one I can afford. I’m probably better off saving a larger amount of money before I buy a place.

I wanna get me some of that Help to Buy ISA money

I’m counting down the days until the 6th April when I can finally get myself a Help to Buy ISA. (I’ve already paid into a Cash ISA this tax year and Halifax told me I wasn’t eligible to switch until the 2016/17 tax year). If I open my new ISA with £1,200 and then deposit £200 each month after that, after a year I’ll land an extra £850 towards my deposit for free. Oh, and if I decide to wait until 2018 to buy a home, I can move my money into a Lifetime ISA and grow my funds even further. Give me some of that free money!

I want to build my credit rating

Okay okay, part of the reason I’m ‘delaying’ home ownership is because I don’t think I could actually get a mortgage right now because of my diabolically non-existent credit rating. I always thought that never having a credit card would be a good thing. Turns out it aint! And lenders are wary of lending mega bucks to people who haven’t borrowed money before. Once Jake and I move in, I’ll be using my shiny new credit card on a regular basis to prove I’m a good little borrower.

I want to live with Jake NOW!

I really can’t wait to live with Jake. We may not be able to decorate our rented flat like we would if I bought a house myself, but we can definitely customise it a bit and make it our own. I feel like life will be one big sleepover when Jake and I live together.

I currently spend half my week at my parents’ house and half of it at the house Jake shares with strangers. I know I’ve been extremely fortunate to avoid expensive living costs for so long, but I’m tired of lugging my stuff back and forth, living in two places at once, and constantly ringing Jake and my Mum up to say “Is such and such a dress at your house?”

Jake’s also tired of living in what feels a bit like a student house. I’ve warned him that living with me will probably be much worse because I’m lazy AF and think nothing of leaving my dishes at the side of the sink until the next day, but he won’t listen.

I also like the idea of Jake and I becoming more of a team and working together to run a home that we ‘own’ equally. Jake’s a couple of years younger than I (toy-boy) and having only graduated from university last summer, he’s at the start of his career and not in a position to save a deposit just yet. I don’t want the first time we live together to be on an uneven footing, if that makes sense. I don’t want it to feel like he’s living in my house. I want it to be ours. I want us to work together to save more money.

So there you have it! Although my deposit-saving mission continues, Jake and I are on the hunt for a place to rent. If anything, I think this could give my blog a fun new angle too. Maybe this time next year I’ll be in the paper again but for saving £10,000 in a year while renting, rather than by ‘sponging off mummy and daddy’ as so many Daily Mail readers kindly worded it!

OH AND BY THE WAY: If you happen to know any responsible landlords in the Manchester area that are looking to cut out the middle man (letting agents) and find some lovely little tenants, do give me a shout! We’re finding flat hunting to be a pain in the arse!