Ralph Mowery wrote
Rod Speed wrote

I've seen a bit more than that with some of my mates,
particularly those who rent before buying and move
between rental places due to a rent hike. But my town is
desperately shot of rentals and so the landlords exploit that.

I think a lot of areas are like that now.

Not here. Our state and federal capitals are good for renters
at the moment, essentially because the immense numbers of
foreign students arent coming here anymore due to the virus.

My town has by far the biggest chicken and turkey operation
in the entire southern hemisphere, that the reason for the
extreme shortage of rental accommodation. It will be interesting
to see how long that lasts, we are building an immense number
of new houses. He works there, driving a forklift in the cold store,
right thru the night and is just now having his first owned house built.

Here its actually cheaper to buy than to rent now, even with a big new
house.

I got to thinking about my son and family. Up to now they
have moved about 6 times. Each time was because the rent
went up. They finally bought a house this year when he
was 43 years old. He had changed jobs 3 or 4 times.

After what hapened to me, I told him that if he found a job that paid
more or he thought he would like it, jump ship and change. The long
range promises do not mean much. When I started with one company
they promised we could retire at 55 with about 80% of our salary and
80 % of the health insurance paid. The company changed hands several
times and the last 3 times took away part of the retirement and all of the
insurance of the retiring people. That forced me to work to 62 instead
of what could have been about 57 for me and a loss of over $ 1000 a
month of retirement money. At least it was not like Enron where people
saw their company invested stock retirement go from around a million to
around $ 10,000.