IT is generally accepted that renting a home in the long-term does not make much financial sense.

Years of expensive monthly payments and there is no bonus at the end of owning the home which can be sold on at a hefty profit.

It can be viewed as just throwing good money after bad and is one reason why folk in the UK are seemingly obsessed with getting on the property ladder.

Not that it’s that easy to even get on the first rung of the ladder these days with potential buyers needing to earn more than £50,000 a year to be able to buy a home in Edinburgh.

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In other areas, the figure is more than £40,000 a year and helps to explain why there is such an affordable housing crisis in many areas.

The answer, of course, is building far more affordable homes for people to buy and spare them the ordeal of years renting, or even worse – moving away entirely.

The housing problems have now seemingly spread into the maritime world after it was revealed that an emergency ferry brought in to help prop up Scotland’s ageing fleet for two years is to cost £3 million more than it cost to buy.

The £17m bill for MV Alfred, which covers the period from May 2023, is also half the price of a similar vessel that could have been bought outright four years ago but was rejected.

Pentland Ferries staff, who are operating services on behalf of ferry........

© Herald Scotland