I'm not sure I've ever mentioned where we live, it's a private rental and when we moved in 5 years ago it was with an agent but they only dealt with the new tenancy and then they were dismissed. Since then the landlord has run the property themselves...when I say run the property that's a bit of a stretch. The house is a nice, three bed property in a good area and on the surface every is fine.
For the majority of the time our landlord leaves us to our own devices and that's really ideal for us and them but when we need anything we are treated like we're asking the earth. The boiler blew up one Christmas and water was flooding out, you know they tried to salvage it before sighing as they said it'll have to be replaced. At one point they told us we had to manually switch between having hot water and heating...we couldn't expect both.
At the moment we're waiting to hear about our oven that stopped working before Christmas...we have one that has a main oven and then a little side oven that doesn't get very hot and only has one shelf. We couldn't cook a full turkey this Christmas and had to cook most of the dinner in the air fryer. It's now February and we still have no oven and no word for from the landlord.
Have I mentioned they put our rent up by almost 25% with no negotiation and were told if we didn't pay somebody else would.
We are frantically saving at the moment but at the rate we're going it'll be years before we can save enough to even get a 10% deposit. Our own home would mean such security for us and more importantly the children. Our family has specific needs, B could do with a wet room and the big boys need more space. At the moment Paul and I sleep in the dining room so that S has his own room along with B in hers and L and R share one. Ideally we need four bedrooms which around here cost around £350,000 which is just ridiculous. We'd happily move to a cheaper area especially when the big boys are settled in secondary school but even in the cheapest areas four beds are like gold dust and priced accordingly.
I really hate paying off someone elses mortgage especially when we are treated as such an imposition to them. I know things like boilers and ovens are expensive but when you offer a house out to rent we as tenants should get a good service and this is not. We have never missed a rent payment even though them putting the rent up crippled us for a while and has changed how we live accordingly especially during a cost of living crisis.
There isn't much of a reason behind this post other than a rant but I feel better getting it off my chest, the amount of people who tell me we are "lucky" to rent as they own and need a new roof, boiler etc. I can't even answer those people as they've obviously never rented, especially in the current climate. They can sit there counting their own pennies in their own living room that they decorated themselves while we wonder if our tenancy will get renewed or hiked up again in June.
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