Rent the house of your dreams.

I came across a very interesting article in The Telegraph today, whilst sat infront of my log-burning stove, with a mug of hot chocolate, topped with marshmallows. Today was a wrap up warm and stay at home day, it's I while since I saw snow in October !

It is like the beginning of a children's story. The Durrell family famously rented an animal-infested house in Corfu, while E Nesbitt's railway children and their mother took a cottage in Yorkshire which had a railway line running along the bottom of the garden. All kinds of families are now turning to renting. They aim to have adventures, achieve their dreams and avoid any feeling of coming down in the world.

Many other families are thinking alike. The rented sector, which for so long has been inhabited by singles and couples in their 20s and 30s, is now seen as a place of sanctuary and freedom. Hits for family-sized houses on the website in August were a staggering 68 per cent higher than in August last year, and stayed high in September. Hits for renting were 51 per cent higher than in the same month in 2007.

One Hampshire land agent looking for a house to buy realised he could rent a five-bedroom Georgian vicarage with a paddock, stable and outbuildings in a village for the same monthly cost as a mortgage on a Victorian terrace in the nearest town. He took a five-year lease on the vicarage.

"It sounds clever and strategic," he says, "but it just suits us at the moment. You have to ask yourself how much more do you own a house if you are mortgaged up to the hilt on it?" But isn't that monthly outlay dead money? "Not at all, because I am getting what I want. What I have bought is the joy of living in this house."

Sam Gibson and his family have just moved to Morpeth in Northumberland. He and his wife Emily, their two lurchers and seven-month-old Alfred, have moved into the wing of a Grade-I listed pile called Capheaton Hall. And they are renting it.

"We are terrifically lucky," says Sam, an estate agent with Strutt & Parker. "We have four bedrooms, live in one of the area's finest houses, look out over the most perfect ha-ha and have been invited to help eat the produce from the kitchen garden." He does want to buy eventually: "I want to make a home for my young family," he says. "I want a place where Alfie can grow up and I can plant a peach tree."

The 25-year repayment mortgage became too expensive for many people by the end of 2007. Savills, the estate agency, says, they cost 76 per cent more than renting. Many people switched to interest-only mortgages instead.

Seems like now is the ideal time to rent a family sized house of your dreams, at least until 2023, if you read my previous post !

Happy hunting.

Mr Jackson.