Suddenly, out of nowhere, all of my friends are buying flats and houses. Houses. Not Lego ones. Real ones made from bricks.
I say ‘out of nowhere’ but of course to them, it’s come out of months of hard work. Months of stressful meetings with mortgage advisors and banks, months of daily proof that estate agents are Satan in pointy loafers sent to test us, months of scrimping and spreadsheets, tense debates with partners in unfamiliar coffee shops and weighing up which they care more about: having a postcode that doesn’t make them weep a bit every time they type it into Amazon, or a bedroom that doesn’t also double up as the kitchen.
It’s a pretty amazing feat, to have managed to get onto the first rung of the property ladder despite the ladder basically, these days, being covered in butter and starting halfway up an icy mountain inhabited by wolves – and I am chuffed for them. Not least because I plan to enjoy barbecues in their gardens all summer, and stay in their spare rooms when I can’t be arsed to dust my own.
No, I mean ‘out of nowhere’ for ME – because I had kind of assumed we would all just rent forever. For those of us who are only just getting round to keeping our money in an ISA rather than our wardrobes and the pockets of local bartenders, this late-20s property splurge is a scary twist in the millennial tale. It’s the bit in the dream where everyone has secretly studied for the exam except you, and then you realise you are naked and everybody points and laughs, especially Sarah Beeny.
I thought that instead of finding ways and means to invest in bricks and mortar, we were all going to just keep renting and spend our money on elaborate brunches and crowdfunding cool new apps. Wasn’t that the plan, guys? Guys? GUUUYS?
But hey, it isn’t all doom and rising damp for tenants. For every “renting is just throwing money away!!!” (to which the official retort is always: “god you’re RIGHT, so will you give me 30k for a deposit?”), there’s a broken boiler we don’t have to fix, and stamp duty we don’t have to pay. And while no other options are open to us, we may as well look on the bright side of being Generation Rent – because if we don’t laugh, we’ll cry.
Here are some reasons to be glad you’re not on the property ladder yet.
When your oven explodes, your ceiling caves in or a storm blows half your roof off, you do not need to pay for it.
Because buried somewhere under the panic of that phone call to your landlord explaining that you’re knee-high in debris and detritus and could they send a builder over asap please if it’s not too much trouble, there is a small, Nelson-from- The-Simpsons -ish voice saying “HA-HA!” Embrace that small voice. Hold it close. This is not your circus, and you don’t need to foot the bill for the monkeys.
You can always move on a whim.
Give or take a break clause or finding somebody sane from Spare Room to replace you, you can be out of there in a relative jiffy. You can move for ridiculous, indulgent reasons like there is a really good brunch place two miles away, or your GP’s surgery always smells like feet. You can go on holiday, fall in love with a whole new city and immediately move there for a year or five, without worrying about the mortgage on that semi-detached in Maidenhead you’re tied to forever. You won’t, of course, but you still could.
Photo: Getty
You can blame your landlord’s terrible taste for everything.
When you live in a rented flat and have a horrible carpet, nobody judges you. “Ew, look at our horrible carpet!” you can say cheerfully when people come over. "Gross, isn’t it?" But if you own that horrible carpet, you assume responsibility. Nevermind that you just shelled out Kardashian-level dollar to buy the place and don’t have a whole bundle left over for sanding down hardwood floors – you’re still the guys who have a horrible carpet. That carpet is all on you.
But you still get to tart it up superficially.
People who think rental homes have to be soulless magnolia boxes are fools. With a little imagination, a few decent charity shops and a box of Command damage-free picture hanging strips, anywhere can look and feel like home. Sofas can be covered, lampshades can be changed, that dubious brown stain can be concealed with an artful frame cluster. You know what’s much less fun home makeover? Dry rot.
Photographed by Anna-Alexia Basile
You do not need to know how much a mattress costs.
Apparently, and as a renter I can’t absolutely confirm this isn’t a lie, a decent mattress costs hundreds of pounds. Many hundreds. Over a thousand, I’m told, for the really top-notch fancy mattresses that won’t leave your spine bent like a pretzel. But as a tenant in a pre-furnished rental, you get to live in blissful ignorance, assuming that when the time comes you can probs get a mattress for about £34.99 from Argos, or just find one in a skip. The same is true for sofas, fridges, bathroom fittings and curtains. Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.
Photographed by Anna-Alexia Basile
Our ‘worst case scenario’ is still fairly comforting.
You know the one – the worst case scenario in which if everything went completely to shit and you lost your job, ran out of money and couldn’t pay your rent, you could still technically move back in with your parents or some other kindly relative. Technically. It’s the back-up plan of back-up plans but you still like to have it there, tucked away at the back of your mind like an emotional crash mat. Factor in mortgage repayments, though, and the worst case scenario becomes a whole lot more depressing.
Estate agents will not destroy your relationship.
You could still break up for a million other reasons, obviously. But at least you will never realise that your love has died while screaming at each other about subsidence cracks in front of Gavin from Strutt & Parker.
Photographed by Maria Del Rio
You never bore people to death talking about cavity wall insulation over dinner.
Or surveyor’s fees. Or grouting. Or Japanese knot weeds. Nobody ever steers people away from you at parties, saying “I wouldn’t – she’s got Farrow & Ball swatches.”
The dinner you’re not boring people to death over can be somewhere really great, rather than a suburban branch of Bella Italia.
You’re eating somewhere that doesn’t have a laminated menu, in a neighbourhood that people actively travel to for reasons more immediate than ‘good school catchment areas.’ That is a giant plus, my friend. Drink it down like on-tap Negroni.
Photographed by Eric Helgas
You (hopefully) live somewhere you really love.
Even as a cash-strapped renter, chances are you still live somewhere you could never dream of living as a homeowner. Maybe you have a killer view, or a park right on your doorstep. Maybe you’re three steps from a station that gets you to work in a sweet 15 minutes. Maybe the flat itself has tiled fireplaces or moulded cornices that make your pulse beat a little quicker, but in the real world would come with an impossible price tag. You might live in the kind of houseshare where people bring you bacon sandwiches in bed when you’re hungover, and let you borrow their fanciest shoes. Perhaps you buy your milk in the same corner shop as Dame Judi Dench. Count these blessings, for they have value all of their own. Count them, and recite them to muffle out the sound of people telling you that property prices in Godalming have tripled since Tuesday. There you go.
Photographed by Bek AndersenLike what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?
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