As much as the idea of owning a home is romanticised in our culture, the realities of owning your own home aren’t always what they seem. Being a homeowner can be great, but it can also introduce additional challenges that inhibit your potential quality of life. Taking a different perspective, we want to explore why rentals can make a more suitable fit for the short or long term, to see what this approach can offer.
Taking Advantage of the Market
If you already own a home, you’ve probably watched as the property market has grown, and with it the value of your biggest asset. Selling today with a service like a Sold online estate agent can help you cash out what has been years of investment through the aid of a modern sales system. Without the use of traditional estate agents, this approach can be much faster, with free cash offers and no hidden fees to quickly take advantage of market surges. This can provide a great deal of starting capital, which you can then leverage for your time renting.
Improved Location Potential
It’s natural for our wants and needs from life to change over time, and there can reach a point where an owned home no longer lives up to its function. It could be because the kids have moved out, it might be because you have new career opportunities in different areas, or just be a case of you wanting something new.
Whatever the case, rentals can offer far more choices in where you can live compared to owning a home. According to the Office for National Statistics, the average price for a house in Edinburgh is £347,000, while the average monthly rent for the city sits at £1,598 (Q3 2024 Citylets report). While the rental searching process can be tricky, it can also result in a location next to the culture you love in the centre of town, or nearer to friends and family.
Easier Upkeep
When you own your own home, seeing a pipe break or a tree fall on your lawn is a frustrating sight. You know it’s going to cost you time and money to fix, and nobody enjoys this stressful process. Without owning a home, you don’t own these kinds of problems that come with it. As noted by rental laws at Gov.uk, landlords should provide solutions to problems as soon as possible, leaving you more time to focus on more enjoyable experiences.
Of course, there’s nothing saying that moving into a rental needs to be a permanent solution if that’s not what you’d prefer. While renting does offer some undeniable advantages, it can also feature a temporary change in lifestyle as you look for a new house to buy or a new way to live. What we’d really like to encourage is that nobody simply overlooks the opportunities provided by the rental market. There are pros and cons for both options, and until you experience both sides of the coin, it can be difficult to fully appreciate the value of either.
