Buying vs. Renting

Smurf1976 said:

The thing about owning is that I can have what I want, not what some landlord thinks will be a profitable investment. That plus no pesky landlords worrying that the mouse will escape from the cage or taking half a year to fix something that's broken.

If house prices dropped 50% tomorrow then it wouldn't bother me in terms of owning versus renting. It's only an issue if I sell this house and don't buy another one, which isn't what I intend doing since I bought it to live in rather than to speculate upon the price of real estate.

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I would prefer to own as well but at what cost? In the present housing climate I think it is a better financial decision to rent, just for the time being. We hope to buy in the next few years (hopefully not more than five years). If I owned my PPOR outright or had bought it twenty years ago I would not necessarily be rushing out to sell it and then rent.

Also, most landlords are fine. The two we have had have been pretty good. We've not had problems with getting things fixed, in fact that is one of the advantages, something breaks and it gets fixed straight away and you don't have to pay . We also have pets and have been able to find landlords happy for their tennats to have pets.