Renters, look away now

[All for Women]

HOUSE prices are set to climb by nearly a quarter in the next year, defying further rates rises.

Read More... (http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23869827-2,00.html?from=public_rss)

[jillybeanz]

Ker-ikey! How could they get any dearer??

[Heather]

Good for me tho'

[Patricia]

I would really hate to be in the rental market now or even trying to get a foot onto the real estate ladder...so hard for young ones to get started!

[zen]

hard enough for those who are not young as well.. took a lot to get into this mortgage of ours! so glad we are not still renting, even with the spectre of high interest rates after our initial fixed rate finishes end of year..

[Naomi]

Renting is a double whammy at the moment, especially if you're trying to find somewhere to rent - the market is so competitive in some places. Then with house prices going up it's not like you can just decide to buy.

[amyamz]

i dont know if ill ever being able to buy my own home prices are ridicuously high at the moment let alone a nother rise. B/F and i and wanting to buy a house now but we also are looking at getting married and have kids so there is no way we are going to be able to afford it. the rent we pay now is not leaving much for saving

[zen]

that was always our problem too amyamz.. add to that it seemed every year, or every other year, we had to move as the owners decided to sell the house we were renting, or come back and live in it themselves.. or we had enough of horrible places... took heaps out of what we managed to save to move each time.. then we had vet bills... we were getting nowhere fast! till finally it all seemed to just come together.. we are still surprised to realise this is our house! :) took us 16 years...

[kezabelle]

Wouldn't mind if they incresed here... apparently they've stagnated - grr - long story... Very selfish of me I know :hehe:

[crashtestwoman]

I am stressing out big time over the rent increases cause if my rent goes up by a quarter I will be paying $390 a week for a basic 3 bedroom house, no aircon, no insulation, no dishwasher, just 3 bedrooms and a postage sized back yard. That $390 is approximately 50% of our weekly wage and with petrol the way it is, approximately $50 weekly to get to work and back, we are seriously, SERIOUSLY, stuffed. I am trying to put money away now so that we have a little buffer but I'm afraid that it won't last long and we will either have to uproot the kids and move into my brother in laws house (not an option that I relish let me tell you) or well I don't know what else we will do :(. So although I know that owners have to cover there interest rate rises and council rate rises etc, I just wish that they would sometimes think of the people actually living in the houses and if they are really pricing themselves out of the market.
By the way in 2002 when I rented this house it was $180 weekly, 2003 $190 weekly, 2004 $200 weekly, 2005 $210, 2006 $210, 2007 $270, 2008 $300, and it is set to go up again in the Sept lease to about $320 and now that we are on 6 month leases instead of 12 month they put it up twice a year instead of only once a year before. So believe me I have very little sympathy for owners and we need an almost miracle to be able to buy a house.

[kezabelle]

it's crazy how it's gone up isn't it? we pay almost 50% of our income now in mortgage, which is crazy as we don't even have a huge mortgage and we locked in our interest rate when it started to go up... Something has to happen to either increase wages or decrease the cost of living or there will be many people unable to keep the roof over their heads :( As for buying, in our area at least it's a buyer's market - ie, prices have dropped considerably. so if the buyers can get a decent interest rate, it's certainly well worth thinking about