Note to news outlets: not every millennial wants to buy a house

The media has decided to constantly bombard millennials with poor-quality and largely unwanted advice on buying property. We should eat fewer avocados, some warn. We should stop going out or paying for Netflix. According to one article last week, millennials are frivolously spending on cleaners rather than saving for a deposit.

Almost every bit of financial advice to millennials is framed in terms of a deposit – but for those living in London, this could be absolutely terrible advice. Quite a lot of millennials have given up on buying altogether, a decision that for many of us makes absolute sense.

There are a number of good reasons not to buy a house right now: job security is not what it used to be, and more of us than ever are self-employed or freelance. Houses are also less affordable than ever before: in 1990 houses cost just under 3.5 times the average salary; today it’s more than five times the typical salary, rising to more than 10 times in London. That’s not sustainable: anyone buying now risks hitting the top of the market and losing their money.

In practical terms, a millennial in London looking to buy a home already needs to be someone at the top end of the income distribution, will probably need help from their parents, and will often need to spend several years saving for a deposit. In central London, deposits for first-time buyers routinely hit six figures.

This also means that for most people – even those who are relatively well off – buying means moving to the edge of the city, outside the areas in which they can afford to rent. That’s years of self-denial and financial restriction to buy a basic property, far from the centre of the city.

Abandoning the hope of home ownership represents freedom for many millennials: it frees up cash that would otherwise go towards buying an asset into living in the present. That can mean renting a more comfortable room (or flat) in a nicer area, it can mean the difference between having enough money to go out or not, and it can even mean hiring a cleaner to make the overpriced rented flat a good deal nicer.

Home ownership is almost universally seen as a life goal, or a milestone of success. It needn’t be – not owning a home can be a real benefit for many younger adults. It gives us the freedom to move with work, and try to build savings for other purposes – insurance against getting laid off, for travel, or even for a “fuck-off fund”.

We can benefit as a society, too, if we calm down about house buying. The government has focused huge amounts of attention – and a good deal of money – helping people to buy their first home. That’s people who generally are already better-off and least in need of help, and serves to prop up an already overheated housing market.

What if that focus moved instead to improving renting? Pledges to abolish letting fees are a good start, though they risk encouraging landlords and agents to seek money in other ways, such as higher rent.

But we can go much further, establishing better rules to protect deposits, funding to help people get deposits for rentals – perhaps through subsidised loans – and longer, protected tenancies with caps on rent rises.

If we shift our focus away from buying, especially towards measures that will support people to obtain stable, multi-year rentals, renting will become a much better more reliable model for millennials – including as they get older and start families of their own. Being booted out at short notice is a peril for any renter, but far worse for a family with young children.

It’s far too much to hope that news outlets will stop offering unsolicited financial advice to millennials. But while we’re happy to continue hearing about savings, Isas, responsible spending, and maybe even insurance, there’s just one key request: please, please, please stop framing everything as being about houses. Some of us simply don’t want to own one.

• James Ball is the author of Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World, and is a former Guardian special projects editor