You’ve celebrated birthdays there, put up Christmas trees and probably accumulated far more stuff than you had when you first moved in. But does the place you rent feel like home?
For millions of people, renting is simply part of life. It gives us somewhere to live and, for some, the flexibility to move when work, relationships or life change.
Renters in England also have more security than they did before.
Changes introduced through the Renters’ Rights Act mean most private tenancies now run on a rolling basis, Section 21 ‘no-fault’ evictions have ended, and renters have stronger rights around things like rent increases and asking to keep a pet.
Renters deserve to feel secure in their homes, but making renting better doesn’t necessarily change the desire to own.
When a rental becomes home
Private renters in England spend an average of 4.7 years in their current home. That’s plenty of time for somewhere to become woven into everyday life.
You find the coffee shop you like. You know the quickest route to work. You get to know the neighbours. Perhaps you have a child at the local school, or you’ve finally found a pub that does a decent Sunday roast.
You aren’t necessarily looking to leave any of that behind. In fact, the opposite may be true. You might have reached the point where you’d quite like to stay.
That’s when the difference between renting somewhere and owning somewhere can start to matter.
The latest English Housing Survey found that 81% of private renters are satisfied with their accommodation. So, this isn’t a story about millions of people being miserable in rented homes.
It’s about what happens when a good place to rent becomes somewhere you’d like to put down roots.
It’s not always about money
We tend to talk about homeownership in financial terms. But ask someone why they want to own, and the answer isn’t always about making money from property.
In fact, it’s much more ordinary than that.
It’s wanting to decorate without wondering how long you’ll be there. It’s planting something in the garden and expecting to see it grow. It’s getting to know a community and imagining yourself still being part of it five or ten years from now.
It’s knowing that when you put your key in the front door, the home on the other side is yours.
Evidence suggests this sense of stability matters.
Before the latest renters’ rights changes came into effect, the English Housing Survey found that 17% of renters said their housing situation didn’t feel stable enough to confidently make long-term decisions.
The Renters’ Rights Act is designed to give renters more security, and that’s a positive change. But there’s still a difference between feeling secure in a rented home and wanting the permanence that comes with owning one.
For some people, that’s when renting starts to feel temporary, even if they’ve been doing it for years.
So why not just buy?
Own Homes recently surveyed 1,000 renters about their housing aspirations, and 91% stated owning their home was still their dream
Nearly 4 million people can afford monthly mortgage payments but are locked out of buying a home. Why? They can’t save the deposit.
You can have a steady job and a regular income. You can pay your bills every month and feel ready to take on the responsibility of owning a home.
You might even look at the monthly cost of a mortgage and think, I could manage that.
But getting to the point where you can apply for that mortgage is another matter.
You need a deposit first. And saving thousands of pounds while you’re already paying to live somewhere isn’t easy.
That can leave people in an odd position. They don’t necessarily need or want another rental home. They know where they’d like their journey to take them next.
They just haven’t found a way to get there yet.
What if renting could take you towards owning?
That’s the thinking behind Own Homes.
We’re here to help people who can afford the monthly cost of the home but need a way to build their deposit.
With Own Homes, you can choose a new-build home from one of our partner housebuilders. We buy it, and you move in.
You live in it like it’s your own and make one monthly payment. Part of the payment is your rent, and part goes towards your deposit. You don’t need to save for your deposit on top of your monthly payment.
The important difference is that you’re no longer renting one home while trying to save enough to buy another. You’re living in the home you plan to own while your deposit is growing to help buy it.
When you’re ready, you use your deposit and get a mortgage to buy the home you’ve already made your own.
You could move from renting to owning within five years.
And that is the real difference. You have somewhere to call home today, while regularly building the deposit that could help you own it tomorrow.
It means your monthly payments are making a difference. You have a home and have a clear plan for what comes next.
Perhaps that’s when renting really stops feeling temporary.
Not when you’ve lived somewhere for a certain number of years, but when you know the home you live in is the one you’re working towards owning.
Because the home you’re renting today can become the home you own tomorrow.
Sources:
- GOV.uk Length of time in current accommodation and tenure:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/chapters-for-english-housing-survey-2024-to-2025-headline-findings-on-demographics-and-household-resilience/chapter-3-housing-history-and-future-housing - English Housing Survey 2024–25, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Satisfaction with accommodation:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/chapters-for-english-housing-survey-2024-to-2025-headline-findings-on-demographics-and-household-resilience/chapter-4-well-being-and-loneliness - Resolution Foundation report that examined the difficulties of getting on the housing ladder: https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/comment/the-huge-homeownership-hurdle/
