Its been a while, I know...
you might have been thinking that I had already run out of things to moan about...
well, you're wrong!!! the last few months have just provided me with many & more varied topics to add to the list...
first on that long list is: renter vs. owner...
I'm a renter... I have been since I left home & went to uni 13 years ago... though those first tentative years were spent in halls - which is the renting equivalent of having stabilisers on your bike!
I see no shame in still being a renter... I'm 30 & a half years old & I still have not got myself a mortgage - I want to shout it from the top of Calton Hill & damn those disapproving looks from 'proper' grown ups!
There are, as with anything, pros & cons to renting...
Some of the pros - you're not tied into a mortgage for the new 20/30 odd years of your life; you can decide to move without being subject to the rise & fall (but mostly fall these days) of the housing market; you are not responsible for the maintenance & up keep of the building in which you live or the appliances/ finishes within said building (unless they belong to you or you have been stupid enough to break something & own up!)...
Some of the cons - your home is not your home, it belongs to someone else; you have to ask permission of said landlord if you want to paint the walls; you are totally reliant on your (hopefully) delightful landlord to get your boiler fixed when it's been declared unsafe for use while you are suffering from a cold in the middle of the worst UK winter in recent history & not leaving you with no heating or hot water for 4 days...
Now down to the real reason I bring up the topic of renter vs. owner...
My boyfriend & I live in a block of flats in Leith, which was built during the property boom. Not long after the first few flats had been sold the wonderful credit driven economy that my generation had come to know as ours imploded & the housing market crashed...
3 years on & most of the flats in our block have still never been sold, they are rented, in most cases by very nice people who can close doors behind them... I can't comment on the rest, so I can't pin the blame on anyone in particular... but seriously people, how hard is it to close a door behind you???
That's the real problem you see, the front door keeps being left open... and since the door is being left open some of the lovely people of Leith have been coming in & stealing stuff... first to be targeted were the bikes... luckily my bike was left behind but my boyfriends bike didn't fair so well. Although the bike was left where it was tied up, the rather clumsy thieves decided to kick the back wheel in since having a go at the combination lock didn't result in a free bike!
So, thats my moan this week folks... renters, why don't they care? surely there is no difference between being a renter or an owner because in the end it's still your stuff that's being stolen...
No comments:
Post a Comment