Anti-mobility (it's called stability)

We’ve been sold a mantra of mobility.

But what if what we need, if what the world needs is a little less movement, and a bit more stickability. A bit more stability.

Even in when we buy a house, when we literally buy a bit of dirt that doesn’t move, we’ve got half an eye on where to next. On who will buy it after we leave. On how buying here, now, helps us get there, later.

If we’re not expecting to be around long, how much does the world miss out on what we could have contributed. How much do we?

Pick a spot. Plan to stay there for a while. Move if you have to, sure, but stay for a while.

Where would you rather be?

Over the next ten years, would you rather live alone in a house you own yourself, or live with others in a house you all own?

It seems simple and fairly obvious on the face of it, and most of us will have an instinctive response. But we move on, I’d suggest there’s more layers to this than just property.

Here’s some things to potentially consider:

• What kind of house are you imagining in both cases? If you’ve spent ten years living with people, you’ve probably figured out a few things, and the house probably isn’t quite the ‘normal’ kind of building. What could it look like?

• What long-term financial assumptions are you making? In terms of your income, the cost of living, the cost of finance. And remember capital gains aren’t guaranteed, especially when continuous growth isn’t necessarily a good goal.

• If you’ve been able to co-own property for 10 years, you’ve probably been able to do more than just share ownership. You’ve probably had more time and/or money to spend on things you want to do. You’ve probably had to experience significant personal growth in order to live the more than one other person for an extended period of time. You’ve probably shared a whole heap of life moments and memories with a small group of close friends. You’re probably more like (a functional) family than a bunch of mates (although the argument could be made that the most functional family is a bunch of mates).

• What is the benefit of stability? Because you’ve probably lived in the same place for ten years. How many people on your street do you know? How big is your vegetable garden now?

Would you rather…

Sensible housing 'aint what it used to be

Thirty years ago, the smart move would have been to buy as many houses as you could, as cheap as you can, and hang on to them for ten years.

But thirty years ago, the world wasn’t changing that fast, and 1998 wasn’t that different from 1988 (from a property finance point of view).

But 2028 could look significantly different to 2018. In fact, we can be reasonably sure it’ll be significantly different. So what’s the smart move now?

I suspect, it’s actually the same as it has always been:

• Connect with people.

• Learn to live with less.

So instead of maxing out the mortgage to get premium capital gains, how about staying small and staying put? What about building new, better, and smaller. Or bigger, with more people.

Craft a life where if it all goes pear shaped in the market, the prospect of having to stay in one place for the next ten years isn’t just exciting, it is genuinely preferable.