The worst thing about millennials is their pathological compulsion to rise to the bait. Every couple of weeks, some click-hungry website will publish a story titled “Revealed: young people spend too much money on hair gel”, and then you won’t be able to move for apoplectic twentysomething outrage. “Hair gel isn’t even that expensive!” they’ll shout between coordinated bursts of avocado toast and Pokémon Go. The website gets clicks, the anger subsides and then the cycle begins anew. You could set your clocks by it.
Most recently, all this bait-rising has been directed at the housing market. First there was the piece featuring a suggestion from an estate agent that young people are unable to afford houses because they spend too much on sandwiches, and then there was the article about the woman who actually could afford a house because she was prepared to put the work in, not like you ruddy layabouts. Both articles were, at heart, stupid – it’s hard to save tens of thousands of pounds by initiating a cost-effective bread substitution scheme, and it turns out the woman only bought a fraction of a house with the help of a lodger – but it didn’t matter. The bait was risen to, exactly as planned.
Home ownership causes such a reaction for a couple of reasons. First, it’s because saving for a deposit is basically the financial equivalent of that Japanese gameshow about Power Rangers struggling to run up an oil-covered staircase, and second because there’s a definitive cut-off point – if you haven’t cobbled together a deposit by your mid-thirties, nobody will give you a mortgage because you’ll be dead from old age before you can pay it off. And all the while, home ownership is held up as everything we should aspire to. It’s the be all and end all. It’s a sign of financial success. Once you’ve lifted yourself from rental hell, you’re told, nothing will ever go wrong again.
But, as one of the gilded few who have managed to buy a house, I am here to tell you that this notion is absolute cobblers. If anything, home ownership is an even bigger pain than renting. When you rent a home – theoretically, at least – you’re absolving yourself from all basic maintenance. Washing machine breaks? Call the landlord. Floorboard rots? Call the landlord. Entire flat suddenly fills to bursting point with ladybirds for a reason you are not fully able to grasp, (which happened to me at least twice)? Call the landlord. Better yet, if a man knocks on your door and starts tutting about the state of your guttering, you get to shoo him away with a brisk: “I don’t care, this isn’t my house.”
Which is not to say that your landlord will do anything about these issues, of course, because all private landlords are cackling silent-movie villains who spend their evenings wiping their naked bodies with your security deposit while laughing at how cold and damp you are. But, theoretically, it is all on them. If the house falls apart, they’ll have to foot the bill, not you.
However, when it’s your name on the mortgage, the buck stops with you. And that, I’m learning, means that you’ll never have any money ever again. A man knocked on my door just last week, in fact, tutting at the state of my guttering. And then he started tutting at the state of my roof. And then he started pointing out imperceptible flaws in my chimney pointing, which I lied about being able to see because my masculinity is a fragile and ridiculous thing. I couldn’t shoo him away, so I let him climb a ladder and have a look. Whatever he did – hopefully this involved stopping my roof from falling on my childrens’ heads in their sleep – cost me £1,000, and that was only because I talked him down from three times that amount.
And then the diverter valve actuator – which is apparently a thing – went on my boiler and we stopped getting hot water. Even by roping in my retired plumber dad to fix it in exchange for a kebab, the replacement actuator still cost a couple of hundred quid. And it was one tiny part in a labyrinth of parts, all of which could give up the ghost at any minute, all of which cost hundreds of pounds to replace. I’ve never had less money than I have now. My life is basically the first 10 minutes of Up – smashing the savings jar that’s supposed to see me through to retirement every time something goes wrong – but without the sweet release of death at the end. This isn’t something I thought I would ever say, but sometimes I miss renting.
Sure, in theory, home ownership is an investment – in theory I’ll be able to sell my house when I’m 70, move in with my kids and blow the lot on jetskis and Nintendos – but I’ll never recoup the money I’m hurling at the place just to keep it upright. At least when you rent, all the screwing is transparent. At least you can budget for the preposterous £100 letting agent’s renewal fee every year. But when your boiler goes in your own home, you’ll seriously consider harvesting your organs on the black market to pay for it. And when there’s a housing crash, which may well come soon, you’ll be double buggered.
So, millennials, stop complaining. You might not own a house, but I promise you aren’t missing out on much. Also, I realise this column is essentially just a middle-aged man complaining about his roof, and that isn’t very likely to ignite a firestorm of angry comments. So, to counteract that, let me finish by pointing out that millennials are lazy and irresponsible, and everything bad that happens to them is their own fault. There, that should do it.