‘My Mum Is Still Renting, So How Will I Ever Buy A House?’

It’s a very British assumption that everyone’s parents and grandparents own their homes. Millennials are the skint ones, right? We’re just a bunch of silly, avocado-consuming lost souls, so it’s no wonder we’re affected by renting and housing crisis, right? The reality is that the number of retired renters in the UK grew by 200,000 between 2012-16. And that’s not even taking into account renters over 60 who are still working.

My mum is one of them. She is a single 60-year-old woman who has privately rented our family home for the last seven years. It’s a detached, modest house that sits on a quiet street in Yorkshire, cosy and welcoming like The Burrow in Harry Potter. My three siblings and I have all moved out now but there’s always at least one of us turning up on the doorstep at the weekend, knowing we’ll be greeted with a cup of tea, the spare duvet and cuddles with the dog after a crap week.

But I know our house is not actually mum’s to call home. The landlord could decide he wants to sell up and kick her out whenever he likes, the dog technically isn’t allowed to be there, and she struggles to keep up with the monthly costs of a house that is now just too big and expensive for one person. After some quick maths, we worked out that she’s paid a total of £71,400 in rent alone so far. The average national deposit is £28,552 and the average cost of a property in her area is£185,556, so mortgage repayments on a similar house would roughly work out the same as the rent she’s currently paying.

Whenever I read about the Bank of Mum and Dadmy heart sinks, I know it doesn’t exist for me. The fact that my mum is still dealing with bullshit landlords’ stipulations about hanging pictures on the wall makes me feel angry over how she got in this situation, helpless and worried about our futures. If I’m completely honest, it also makes me feel slightly abnormal compared to my friends and other people my age – I don’t know of anyone else’s parents who privately rent. This can lead to frustration when I’m in a conversation with pals and colleagues about the hardships of buying a house, because most of them just assume I’m from a home owning family and they don’t know the half of it.

Mum explained to me that it’s been impossible to be in a position to raise a deposit and get accepted for a mortgage since my dad abruptly left us 20 years ago. They’d bought, sold and profited from a few properties together back when it was oh-so-cheap and easy to do, but the final house – her dream home that they built from scratch on a plot of land - was unfinished and riddled with debts. After a year of my dad not contributing a penny, she sold it for under the asking price, cleared any outstanding payments and adjusted to life as a single parent of four kids. From then on, we lived in 11 other properties together, including a stint in a kind family-friend’s spare room in those harsh, early weeks.

We lived in a council house for a while, but mum was determined to give her children the lifestyle that our dad had taken away from us, which included the perfect family home. She wangled her way into university, started a new career and eventually privately rented that lifestyle for us. Moving was sometimes due to circumstances like money or a new job location; but mostly because it always seemed like a temporary arrangement anyway. Saving for a mortgage deposit while renting and raising four kids on a single low-income wage was futile, so why not treat the family to a change of scene in the semi-detached that’s available to let in the next village instead?

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She says she’s ashamed of her renting repertoire and not being able to buy a house, explaining: ‘I feel a failure because I’ve made you move around so much and couldn’t give you a place to plant your roots – but I just never felt settled in those properties. And now that you’ve all left, the guilt has developed into fear because I’m constantly anxious about this incredibly insecure situation. I’m at a point where I live here on my own and still spend half my wage on rent. I can’t go on like this but I don’t see another option, because if you find it difficult getting a mortgage – how the hell can I get one? I’m too old, I’ll be retiring soon and I’ll still never be able to save for a deposit.’

So, what about a social housing solution, to free up some outgoings? She registered with the local Housing Association, fully prepared to downsize, just after she first moved into this house: ‘I’m still on the waiting list and the five properties they’ve shown me over the past seven years have been pokey one-bedroom retirement flats. I know they’ll never offer me anything better because, to them, I’m just an old lady on her own. I don’t think there are any provisions for people like me and I don’t see similar stories to mine in the media, which adds to the humiliation that I feel, because other Baby Boomer acquaintances and colleagues look completely baffled and concerned when I say I still rent.’

I get frustrated with my mum a lot over this issue. Shame and guilt play huge factors for both of us.

I want to shake out this exhausting sense of pride and force her into the next social housing that she gets offered so that she has spare cash to have some fun with at this stage in her life and, more importantly, put some money aside for when she does retire. But, then, I tell her to hang on in there until something better comes along, because the thought of her living in one of the flats she describes breaks my heart.

I’ve also been angry at her for not staying in one place for longer than a few years, because I envy friends who head back to their childhood homes for the weekend with their picture-perfect families. Then I realised how much she worked to make sure we always had a home that we were proud to bring friends back to, even if it was a different address each time.

Growing up like this affected me in predictable ways. I’ve continued the renting chain in nine more properties over the last ten years since leaving home. I’ve moved my boxes and bags full of stuff on buses, trains, taxis and boats in six different cities across four countries. I can walk into a bare room and turn it into a cosy boudoir quicker than an episode of Changing Rooms. I see nothing wrong with this right now, and sometimes quietly blow my own trumpet for having the tenacity to just keep going and trying new things. The difference with my mum’s story is that it’s culturally acceptable today – expected, even - for people in the 18-35 bracket to jump between rented properties, so I don’t feel pressured or embarrassed by it.

But yes, of course one day I want it to stop and I worry that it won’t. I’m watch my pals becoming homeowners, often with a little financial boost from mum and dad, and I grow green with jealousy.

Something I hadn’t ever expected happened recently – after conscientiously saving, I had savings in the bank. It’s nowhere near enough for a deposit on a house, but it has made me realise that saving one up might not be entirely impossible to achieve in a few years or so. But how the hell can I justify buying a house while my mum continues worrying about paying her rent each month? Would it be a realistic solution to buy a house and let it out to her? Could we get a joint mortgage? Is it selfish of me to not want to buy a property in Yorkshire? Am I a terrible daughter for not ensuring she has a house before I do? Should I help her out with rent so that she can feel more secure where she is?

‘I want my children to sort themselves out before they help me,’ mum tells me, after I put these thoughts and ideas to her. ‘I feel sad that I can’t financially help you with doing that and would happily open a Bank of Mum branch to you if I could, so that you share the advantage that lots of your friends have. I can see how different the market is – when I was your age, getting a quick mortgage when you got married was just the thing you did after saving a very small deposit. You do have more government initiatives aimed at people your age, which I’m going to push you to go for, but I guess they’re only there out of necessity in this crisis. When you do finally get somewhere, I’d be more than happy being your tenant’.

It’s weird to think that my mum might, one day, become my tenant. She did have one question though: ‘do you allow dogs?’

Follow Hollie on Twitter @hlouiser89

This article originally appeared on The Debrief.