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Real estate…. now that brings to mind lots of things… a home to live in, a place to call yours,house ownership.But for many people in New Zealand, buying a home is beginning to be totally out of reach in mine and in their lifetimes.What with the rental situation, almost half of someone’s wages ( if you are earning a wage, say $500nzd) is spent on keeping you inside and living in the place, never mind actually owning the property.

So for many people, myself included, we are going to be renting for the rest of our natural born lives because of the cost of the current rents.The older folk, the earlier generation, the ones who were lucky to own a house in their lifetime - were lucky to get the work so they could pay the mortgage and eventually own their piece of property, a house to call their own, a roof over their heads for life, if need be.That is unless it is freehold - you don’t have to pay leasehold rates to the council.

Things like houses do not come easy to my generation.I would have to inherit a house from a family member or relative.Even so, it might go to some other family member in their will or something like that, a favored relative.Having a partnership might improve my chances, although what do you do if you broke up? the house would have to be sold with a mortgage not fully paid. Or house assets split up and the house sold to cover costs of legal issues. And maybe finding another house, renting again, starting all over.And even if you are lucky to own your own home,there might be family squabbles over your estate, in terms of
who gets what in the will concerning who gets the property after you have died,who gets the furniture,that sort of thing.

I think I’ll stick to renting.At least the property belongs to the landlord, not you.It would be much easier than owning it yourselves.You wouldn’t have to fix the blocked toilet that has been stuffed with crap and needs a plumber to come and fix it.You wouldn’t have to pay rates on the property,or have to insure the property against damage or natural disasters.Remember all those floods that have been happening lately in England? God, the mess they had to clean up…..

But then the landlord might increase the rent to cover costs like paying for insurance on the property.So I am basically stuck with renting.