Stop Telling Every Twenty-Five-Year-Old to Buy a House

A reader writes:

I have been a member of the same congregation for thirty-one years and a teacher for most of that time, and I have watched something happen to young people that troubles me. I want to say it plainly, even if some of my friends at church will not like it. We are pushing our young people to buy houses too soon.

You know how it goes. A young man gets his first proper job and within six months his aunties are asking when he is going to buy. A young couple marries and before the wedding cake is finished somebody is telling them that rent is dead money. Preachers stand up and say that God wants you to own, not rent, and people shout amen. I have shouted amen myself, years ago. I do not anymore.

Let me tell you what I have seen, because I have taught many of these young people and they still come back to talk to me.

I have seen a young woman buy an apartment at twenty-six with almost no savings left over, and then lose her job in a restructuring eighteen months later. She spent two years terrified, borrowing from everybody, and she told me she could not bring herself to go to church because she felt like a failure. I have seen a couple buy a house two hours from both their jobs because it was the only thing they could afford, and I have watched that marriage wear thin in traffic. I have seen a young man take a mortgage on a house in a district he did not really want to live in, because his father said he must, and then get a scholarship abroad that he nearly turned down because of the house. He went in the end, and rented the place out, and has had tenant troubles ever since.

None of them was foolish. They were doing what they were told was responsible.

I understand where the pressure comes from. My parents’ generation came from nothing and to own land was to be free. I bought my own house at thirty-four, and it has been a blessing to me and my children. I am not against homeownership. What I am against is the idea that it is a spiritual milestone, that there is something wrong with you if you are still renting at twenty-eight, or that a young person’s faithfulness can be measured by whether they have a title.

Renting, for a season, can be wise. It lets you find out where you really want to live. It lets you take the job in another parish, or another country, when the door opens. It lets you build savings, not just the deposit but a proper cushion, so the first broken water pump is not a catastrophe. It lets you find out if the person you married handles money the way you thought they did. It lets you learn to look after a home before you are responsible for the roof.

I also think we forget how much the world has changed. When I was young, you worked for one company for twenty-five years. My past students change jobs every three or four years, some by choice and some not. Many of them work on contracts. A thirty-year mortgage is a long commitment to make when you do not know where you will be in five.

I am not saying do not buy. If you have steady income, a good deposit, savings left over, and you know where you want to be, then by all means, and I will come and pray in your living room. What I am saying is that the timing should be yours, prayerfully decided, and not the timing of your aunties or your pastor or your friends on social media.

Jesus asked who, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost. I used to hear that verse only as a warning against building without money. Now I hear it also as permission to sit down. To take your time. To wait until the cost is truly counted.

So to the church mothers and fathers reading this, I would ask one thing. Next time a young person tells you they are renting, instead of asking when they are going to buy, ask them how they are doing. Ask them whether they are saving, whether they are at peace, whether their home, rented or owned, is a place where God is welcome. That is the question that matters.

— Mrs E. Campbell, retired teacher, Mandeville

Editor’s note

Mrs Campbell raises something many readers will recognise: the gap between the good goal of homeownership and the pressure to reach it on someone else’s timetable. Her point is not that renting is better than owning, but that readiness matters more than age. Stable income, savings beyond the deposit, clarity about where you want to live, and a household that agrees are all signs worth looking for.

Her closing question is worth borrowing. Asking young people how they are doing, rather than when they will buy, may be one of the kindest things a church family can do.

Reader letters may be edited for length and clarity, and names and identifying details are changed.

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