To property or not to property?

At the tender age of 15 years old, I started saving to buy a house.

Precocious little thing that I was, I would blearily board the bus every Saturday morning at 7.30am en route to the drudgery of my supermarket employment. As conveyor belts of cookies, condoms and kitty litter slid past in endless parades, I would imagine my $9.60 hourly wage chinking into a growing golden pile in a bank vault with my name on it. Over time, this golden pile would transform into the house of my dreams, which I would deck out with beautiful things and generally live happily ever after.

15 years and 17 jobs later, I live in an idyllic abode. It’s decked out with beautiful things. I am even relatively on track to living happily ever after.

But I haven’t bought a house.

This seems to confuse some people. “Rent money is dead money, you know!” has become a kind of mantra response from existing property owners and moguls who struggle to compute why I haven’t actively acquired my own little piece of Australia. And indeed, if 30-year-old me had told 15-year-old me that I would be living in rental accommodation 15 years down the track with no imminent intention to purchase, young me would probably have punched old me in the face.

Yet here I am, with no house to lay claim or title to. By choice.

And here’s why.

I have (as yet) been unsuccessful in winning Tattslotto, securing myself a wealthy sugar daddy, or reaping a sizeable inheritance from an obscure, estranged family member. As such, property acquisition necessarily means mortgage acquisition.

Now don’t get me wrong; I’m not inherently anti-mortgage. But I’m also not under any illusions that a house would be mine while a bank has me by the (lady)balls. Home owners still pay rent… they just pay it to banks and call it ‘interest’, rather than to landlords with the title of rent.

Not only do aspiring home owners pay interest-rent… they pay a lot. A quick calculation revealed that, were I to purchase equivalent quarters to those in which I current reside, my monthly housing expenditure would double. Double. And that’s if I took out an epic 30-year mortgage at current record low interest rates.

Further number crunching revealed that it would cost roughly the same to buy my current abode as to rent it for the next 57 years. Assuming I hadn’t carked it before this point, I would then be a wrinkly 87-year-old with a f***load of money stashed away in my gargantuan share portfolio or a high-interest savings account, and could comfortably spoil the grand kids for the remainder of my twilight years.

If I took the other road and bought a house instead, then sure — 30 years down the track I might have a place to call my own. And assuming capital appreciation keeps on growing, I might even have the option to sell for a tidy profit.

But many assumptions underlie this projected happy ending. Ongoing capital appreciation. Continuous employment. Relatively stable interest rates.

And in the meantime, what’s the cost?

We humans are complex creatures. Our happiness hinges on a far more complex array of factors than simple financial gain.

Much as they’re often overlooked, there’s a lot to be said for having some degree of freedom and flexibility… to take spontaneous holidays, quit horrid jobs, dine at nice restaurants, spontaneously purchase expensive exotic pets — without fear of default.

So who knows? One day I might buy a house. But right now, freedom and flexibility sit higher on my agenda.

And — at least for now — I think that’s ok.