How has the pandemic affected your ability to pay your rent or mortgage?

Dont have mortgage anymore I paid it off before the pandemic started . Glad to get rid off it as I dont trust mortgage companies or banks anymore. They make the rules up as they go along so any missed mortgage payments by the owners could just be enough of a weapon for a mortgage company to reprocess the property even if its not the fault of the owners .

I am being evicted from my property with my 16 year old daughter because my landlord is selling the property. I am currently waiting for Wandsworth Council to move me to accommodation. I have had to do the homeless application and go through a phone appointment. I don't know where I will be put but my daughter attends college so I have this to bare in mind. Plus the elderly man I am supporting locally too.

1. Service charges need to be capped. I am in a shared ownership flat and the service charge has almost doubled in the time I have lived here for no discernable benefits. This is likely to make staying in London very difficult if I ever manage to retire and still have to pay ever increasing rent and service charge
2. Cladding - we have no idea if we will be faced with a huge bill to replace the cladding as we are still waiting for the survey. This issue has to be resolved by central government without people loosing their homes.
3. Housing associations need to be held accountable for the quality of the buildings they own and their customer service/response time for repairs - L&Q are building many more blocks of flats but seem unable to mange the ones they already have.
I am lucky to have kept my job during the pandemic but the rising costs of living and rising housing costs since the pandemic make the future bleak.

The issue we have is that we are triple mortgage prisoners, potentially facing a five or even six-figure fire safety remediation bill as part of the building safety / cladding crisis. And our flat was sold to us as "affordable housing".

Here are the three ways we are mortgage prisoners.

1) We have an unusual "affordable" lease. Strictly it's not shared ownership, but shared equity. We purchased at a discount, but when we sell, we need to hand over a significant percentage of our profit to the GLA. I think this is fair, it is after all what we signed up for. However, these terms now mean that lenders won't touch us with a bargepole.

2) We also have ground rent that increases by 50% every 10 years. This fact alone means that we are only really sellable to cash buyers. The company that owns the ground rent rights want £30-£40k to buy back the ground rent. Note that in a transaction encouraged by the GLA in 2008, they paid just around £2k.

3) Cladding, cladding cladding. As if the other two issues aren't bad enough, we now face a bill to replace our cladding and balcony decking. We have no idea when this will happen or how much it will cost. But looking at bills received by leaseholders in similar properties, we're potentially looking at a bill of around £80k. We are not eligible for any of the government schemes that have been announced so far, and the irony is, our building has already survived two major fires. No-one here really believes our building is unsafe, and it certainly met the fire regulations at the time it was built.

We are trapped and depressed and stand to loose everything. This was supposed to be "affordable" housing. All this and a pandemic too. We can't even rent it out without paying a substantial fee to the GLA. What an absolute joke.

There should be a limit on how much landlords can increase rent in one go - mine has just gone up almost 10% and I was told this was because they weren't allowed to put it up last year.

I was managing before despite my work being all over the place and my sector being shut for most of last year, but I don't know how I will cover this increase. I already used all my savings last year just to keep my home and I have no back up at all now.

I have lost my job while on maternity leave. The company went into Administration and l was made redundant. This happened during Covid pandemic. My husband was awaiting visa interview which was cancelled with no update when the new one would be and suddenly we both become completely without income with 8 month old baby. It was stressful situation as the Universal credit hardly covers ever rising London rent and bills and we had no money left for food. In our area the 2 bed flat rents for £1600! It’s very unfair that landlords charge such amounts for old outdated flats and we can’t be accepted for morgage that’s would be much cheaper. We feel the housing system in UK is broken leaving young families struggling. To be able keep current flat we had to move in one room of the flat and find lodger to keep up the payments. It’s stressful and it is affecting our mental health as we feel crammed. It’s heartbreaking our son cannot have his own room and space for toys etc. More affordable flats needs to be built. No everyone can be on 40k income that’s the reality politicians and developers are ignoring.

My wife and I had started trying for a baby at the end of 2019 so by the time our daughter was born in mid-late 2020 things were in full swing with the pandemic. We had anticipated a drop in income due to her being on maternity leave, but her workplace was closed for months on end and furlough didn't cover 100% of her wage. We made changes to our lifestyle to keep costs down where we could, but our savings dwindled month after month. We've always been able to make rent but it's now continually putting us in our overdraft, which, of course, attracts fees which cost even more money.

I was furloughed for a while and thus it was a very scary situation. I am now going to lose my job as I work in the arts sector which has been badly impacted by the pandemic.

Thank you for your concern. However, I don't have mortgages on any of my properties, my savings increased as spending went down on such things as travel and dining out. I feel the quality of my life was reduced in terms of exercise and self-care in general. It would be helpful to have free access to exercise centres (the BETTER group) to get people going again after the lay-off.

Wish so much that London would be levelled up to affordable housing levels of rest of country, and to the better chance of social housing rest of country has. Know still difficult out of London and sometimes long council waits but there's hope unlike in London.

No it has not affected my ability to rent but it has decreased my chances of getting a mortgage

The only way we can keep up with our rent is for my husband who is 75 years old to remain working, cannot afford to retire, as our housing association Peabody puts up our rent every year which is not affordable that why he cannot retire, I don’t know what will be the situation if he has to retire, We try not think about it. It is not burying head in the sand but with both having Covid this year we just try look after our health and try not have to much stress.

My ability to pay my monthly rent has remained constant but I am very concerned that private landlords will use the difficulties of the last 18 months to increase the amounts they charge. If this happens, I will be in a more precarious situation.

Luckily at present my mortgage payments are still up to date. However, I have seen my utility bills double, council tax increase significantly, groceries increase and my income being taxed at a ridiculously high rate for what I make.
- I have put off having kids, as I am uncertain as to whether we could afford them
- I am rejecting slightly higher pay because the taxes mean my real income decreases exponentially for every additional pound, and I end up worse off

I read other comments asking for a rethink of taxing to the working class and would also encourage looking at that. London is incredibly expensive and tax bands have not been adjusted in years, meaning many of us are increasingly worried about finances and are working extremely hard and feeling increasingly punished by the system.