Renting Vs Buying

Last week I was the beneficiary of nothing less than a 21st-century miracle when, amid a plethora of reports showing that the property market is exhibiting the vigour of Ann Widdecombe’s sex life, I somehow managed to flog my flat in Brixton, South London. Ker-ching! However, if I look as miserable as ever, it is because the urge to perform a celebratory jig has been hampered by:

1. Moving. One of the reasons I spent more than seven years in Brixton, despite never having developed affection for the area, and having twice been violently mugged there, is that anything, up to and including being beaten around the head, is preferable to moving. But the shifting of belongings into the friend’s house in which I’m temporarily residing turned out to be even more exhausting than I’d expected.

2. The realisation that saving chunks of my salary in stocks would have been more lucrative than buying a flat. Inertia, a series of financial bungles, and the failure of a boiler in the week before the sale, meant that despite the biggest property boom in living memory I only just managed to break even from trading in bricks and mortar.

3. The news that renting – my plan for the future – is becoming just as prohibitive as buying. Paragon, a buy-to-let mortgage lender, reported last week that rents are rising, while Abbey calculated that on average you will spend £10,500 more if you rent rather buy over a period of 25 years.

This last issue was of particular concern, even more so after I read a horrifying article in The Times…

Read atTimes Online