To Buy Or Not

There’s nothing like attempting to buy a house to make you realise that realise that renting may not be so bad after all. I mean, it’s unstable, and you’re constantly having to worry about the real estate person popping over to admonish you for having a couch on the porch. You can’t do what you want in the garden or paint over the horrible wallpaper. 

On the other hand, though, you’re not responsible for cleaning those decades-old stains out of the carpets or replacing that bung plumbing. You also don’t have to pay rates or house insurance, or worry about plummeting property values. It appears to be much of a muchness, with stability coming in proportion to responsibility. Or so it seems.

When you buy a house, you also have to jump through all these other hoops, like engaging a conveyancer. For properties near Carnegie, it turns out, this is perhaps even more necessary than usual due to the number of urban myths going around in real estate circles. In fact, it might even be an urban myth that you need a conveyancer in Carnegie more urgently than you would elsewhere; who’s to say?

Matters of conveyancing and settlement aside, it’s worth considering that renters have a certain stability of their own. It’s that which comes with not being in charge of a bricks-and-mortar building, which could at any moment be decimated by a natural disaster. Sure, there’s home and property insurance for that, but again, it’s just one more thing you have to shell out for.

Yes, it’s a privilege to even be thinking of buying a house, but I’m not sure it’s for me. Renting just feels more free and easy, you know? I might change my tune at some point, like next week when half my paycheck goes into a black hole when it could be going into my own nest egg. But until then, I’ll just… try not to think about it?