To Rent or Not to Rent
Leah Marks, a long-term renter from Bristol, likes renting but feels pressure from friends and family to buy. She travels to Berlin to explore why the Germans like to rent.
Leah Marks is a renter from Bristol who likes renting but is coming under pressure from friends, family and partner to buy. She knows that, in the UK, it's getting harder to find your feet on the property ladder. And she also knows that even though the rental market is growing, young people are struggling with high rents, insecure tenancies, and often poor quality housing.
Meanwhile Germany is often held up as a model for renting where, for decades, it's been easy, socially acceptable, and common to rent for often long periods of time. So Leah travels to Berlin, a city with one of the highest proportion of people renting in the country.
There she meets her counterparts and compares the legal, social, psychological, economic and emotional realities of life when you rent, especially when there is very little peer and parental pressure of 'when are you going to buy?'.
Producer: Beth O'Dea.
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- Wed 26 Nov 2014 11:00Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4 FM
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Radio 4 looks at homeownership, renting and buy to let.