To buy or not to buy?

I was asked this lunchtime when I would be buying a house. It’s not the first time I’ve been asked this, god no; I get asked this question on a fairly frequent basis to the point where I could call it “societal pressure”.

Whenever I give the answer that I’m not completely sure I want to own property, the response is normally a concerned nod or frown which seems to conceal the implicit question: “what’s wrong with you?” OK, maybe I’m being a bit sensitive but there is no mistaking that the contemporary view, even moral, is that one should aspire to owning property. I blame Margaret Thatcher for this…and so many other things but that’s another issue for another day.

Sometimes it is explained to me – patronisingly, I may add – that a property is an investment, an asset, and it doesn’t matter how much money you have to outlay, it will pay dividends in the long run. I understand this, of course, and it doesn’t need to be explained. The paradox is that I am conservative when it comes to money and see the huge loan that one has to take to buy a house to be a very big risk. What if I lose my job? What if I become ill? What if I quickly need to sell for some other reason? And what if one of these things happens when I still owe more than the property is worth? Selling won’t save me. It’s a financially ruinous situation and it feels like too big a gamble to take, no matter how safe this gamble has shown to be historically.

The other problem I have with buying is that I place a large value on my independence and flexibility. If one day I decide I want to change my lifestyle or up sticks and move to another country I want the freedom to be able to do that. Having a property and huge mortgage - for it would be huge given today's house prices - would mean that it would be less easy to change my life, if that is what I wanted to do, and would also mean that I would need to keep earning at my current rate (or whatever salary I’d based my mortgage payments on), hence locking myself into a pair of lovely golden handcuffs. Where’s the freedom in that?

It has been argued that the reticence to buy a property is symptomatic of a broader inability to commit long term. I don’t think this is true. I have managed to maintain long-term relationships with friends, even while living abroad, and have a close and ongoing relationship with my family. I think I can commit but I wouldn’t consider a commitment to a material possession (such as a house) as a particularly profound one.

But, aside from all this, I still feel that weight of expectation from friends, family, colleagues and the government, frankly, to buy a property in order to be a valued and fully integrated member of society. So I don’t know what to do.

Is anybody else in this quandary? Has anyone else been there? How have you weighed up the need for independence against the pressure to conform, the long-term expected gain against the short-term risk, especially in the current economic climate?

Any advice would be more than welcome.