What To Do When Rent’s Getting Too Expensive

Renting a home is rarely cheap. However, there may come a time that you have to decide when your landlord is asking for too much. Rents typically increase year by year, but not always at a rate that you would consider reasonable. If your place is starting to cost too much to rent, then it may be time to look at your other options. Here are a few worth considering.

Talk to your landlord

First of all, you should get in touch with your landlord if they have recently increased the rent beyond your means to pay for it. It is your right to ask for a rent decrease, but don’t be surprised if you have to do some haggling for it. For instance, you might have to accept further responsibilities in caring for the home to take the cost off the mind of the landlord. Or you may need to look at local prices to show that they are overcharging you.

Get a roommate in

You may have to ask your landlord if you have permission to do that, but by subletting or encouraging them to find an additional tenant, you can help cut down the living costs of renting considerably. Not only can an additional tenant split the rent with you, but they can also split all of the usual household bills, as well. Of course, this comes with the sacrifice that you now have to share your living space with someone that you didn’t previously. However, it may be a bargain worth making.

Think about moving

If you have liked the home that you have been living in, this may not be the most attractive of outcomes. However, if you have no other options then it may be time to get in touch with letting agents and start looking at other properties. If rents have been increasing beyond your means in the surrounding area, then you might need to look at moving into a different part of the town entirely. Of course, alongside changes in rent costs, you should also consider changes in things like commuting costs to make sure that they don’t add up to make the move financially pointless, too.

Consider buying instead

Saving up to buy a home can be difficult to do while you’re still renting a property, that much is well-known. However, it might be better to start aiming towards that goal sooner rather than later if rent is always becoming too much of a pressure. In general, homeownership is less expensive, but that initial barrier to entry, of the down payment on the mortgage, can keep a lot of renters out of the shot of owning a home. There are mortgage saving tools that can help you keep costs down, however, as well as schemes like co-ownership plans aiming to make it easier to cross that initial hurdle.

Given that rents increase across the board, in general, there’s no way to fully guarantee that you can find a better price. However, the tips above can at least help you exhaust your options.

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