Living happily ever after in a rented house, maybe

Living happily ever after — in a rented house, maybe

I was at a recent business conference where the presenter, a young speaker from Generation Millennial, made some insightful comments about changes he saw occurring in the Australian economy - the rise of the sharing economy (ride sharing, home sharing and job sharing) and how these new approaches to ownership were changing the way people thought about traditional consumer purchasing behaviour.

Interesting insights I thought.

He went on to list emerging business examples of the new sharing and rent-on-demand economy including renting music through Spotify, accessing movies on demand from Netflix, renting a community car (or van) from the Car Next Door and renting movies online direct from YouTube.

Add to this ever growing list of rentables the prospect of renting a driverless car in the future and it was a great high level presentation; all until he made the rookie mistake and said,

‘So what's the point of owning a house today, when I can rent one or rent an Airbnb whenever I want?’

Boom!

With that potentially naïve comment to a room of financial advisers his presentation fell off a cliff into irrelevance, all because he didn't understand the place family home ownership holds in the Australian economy.

Three high-stakes risks of being a Sole Trader

Three high-stakes risks of being a Sole Trader

Most people going into business for themselves cite a desire to provide more opportunities for their family and greater personal freedom.

But working for yourself involves more personal decisions, greater risks and depending upon your business structure, greater personal liability.

And if you're making this decision based simply on cost alone, this is the question you need to answer, ‘What could possibly go wrong?’