this is one of those articles that concentrates on its point to the point of completely missing the point: save thousands by buying, not renting

abbey national estimates that on average, over a 25-year period, it is £101,679 or 30% cheaper to buy a property in the uk than to rent one. how many people actually rent a single property for a quarter of a century? how does the equation change when you move house every two years, every four years, every eight years? there’s a host of factors including but not limited to: the ease and cheapness of surrendering a rental contract over the complications and expense of selling a house, the fact that property prices can go up as well as down (unlikely over twenty five years, but over two?) and the issues of leaving building maintainance costs to the landlord rather than shouldering them yourself.

although my own brief foray into the housing market was a financial success i’m not sure why abbey national are bothering to point the obvious out to us really, other than to try and sell more mortgages.