Zoopla: many underestimating the cost of running a home
Our budgeting skills are poor, but a new tool from Zoopla can help.
Do you know what all the monthly bills for your house add up to? According to new research, more than a third of us haven’t a clue how much it’s costing us to run our homes.
The average homeowner believes they spend £812 a month, but th the actual national average running cost of £1,505 is almost twice as much.
It isn’t just homeowners getting their sums wrong. The survey by property website Zoopla found that the average renter thought their monthly running costs were £1,227, 33% less than the national average cost for renters of £1,819.
It seems our maths is really letting us down as 55% of us could say what each of our monthly bills cost, but couldn’t tally what these totalled each month.
Impact
With so many of us massively underestimating our monthly running costs, we could be setting ourselves up for trouble when searching for a new home. After all, how can you work out what rent or mortgage repayments you can afford if you aren’t able to accurately estimate the cost of the bills you’ll need to pay?
“With research showing that one in ten consumers do not even consider how much it might cost to run a property until after they have moved in, house-hunters could risk a nasty surprise by not factoring in ongoing expenses like energy and water bills into their budgeting,” says Lawrence Hall, spokesperson for Zoopla.
It seems the oldest generation are the worst at estimating their household running costs, despite having the most experience. The survey found 43% of over 70s did not know the costs of their property, followed by 42% of people in their 20s.
New tool
To help you factor household bills into your search Zoopla has now launched a Running Costs tool that appears next to property listings on its website. This will give you an estimate of what the monthly costs of running the property will be, including mortgage or rent payments, energy, water bills and Council Tax payments.
“Buying a home can be a stressful process, but one way to alleviate this is by doing your research and having a really good idea of what your monthly running costs might be,” says Hall.
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