Say you can afford to spend around $550 a week on rent or a mortgage. For that amount of money you could make loan repayments on a house worth around $400,000, or you could rent something worth $500,000 or $600,000 (depending on the suburb).
So you could rent something like this:
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| Some of my best work |
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| Notice how subtle I am? |
2. You don't have to pay for repairs. If the oven/air-conditioner/toilet breaks, it's someone else's problem. Which is great, because these days plumbers charge more than lawyers.
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| My apologies to plumbers everywhere |
3.You don't have to pay council rates.
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| Money |
4. And you don't need a down payment, or need to pay bank fees, stamp duty or conveyancing costs.
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| Money, Money, Money and ... Wait for It... |
5.You're not affected by downturns in the housing market. (In other words you're not the 80% of people currently trying to sell their house and having a dog-gone time of it).
6. Interest rates may go up without warning, changing your mortgage repayments from one fortnight to the next. Your rent, on the other hand, is fixed for the term of the lease.
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(Mr Interest Rates turned out totally blind - I'm thinking that's my subconscious' final word on the chaps at the Reserve Bank).
7. You have greater flexibility to move. You know definitively when your lease is coming to an end and can plan your movements accordingly, without having to wait for an uncertain property market to catch up with you.
8. There's no pressure to renovate. No guilt over not having spruced up the second bathroom, because it's not your house.
9. You'll inevitably end up shopping at tenant-friendly IKEA, which I consider to be the home of AWESOME (but more on them later).
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| Wow, the scale on this one is way off. |
10. There's nothing to stop you from buying another house to rent out (to stay in the market, for tax purposes, etc) while you yourself live in a rental. You'll have the best of both worlds.
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| Don't ask why you're a penguin. Just go with it. |
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