How much does a lifetime of renting cost?

I’ve reluctantly started the pastime of adulting. 

I don’t like it one bit. Travel, sports, watching sports, adventures and obviously smashed avocado as well as other fun stuff has been replaced with constant visits to my local DIY store to annoy Brian in the gardening section. Brian, if you’re reading this, the thrip has got a lot worse on the viburnum. See you Saturday. 

Renting versus Home Ownership

That’s because we decided to buy a house…for the first time…in our 50s! I know right, bucking the trend of house obsession in this country and probably a lot later than most of my Gen X peers. Why did it take me so long? 

Home ownership, like kids, wasn’t something I nor my husband saw for ourselves. And, as I got into my 30s, my path started to wildly swing from most of my friends. They were fighting sleep deprivation, baking cakes for kids birthday parties or building a retaining wall while I was…. I was, um, doing something else. 

I was renting and it suited me just fine. The thing is, I’m a classic Gemini, I embrace, even seek change. Plus, my contract work lifestyle often lent itself to skiving off for a couple of months to travel.  Just to give you some idea of the large number of rentals I have lived in since I first flew the family coup, here’s a brief summary. 

The old Lake House, the site of the Bruce Mason theatre in Takapuna, River Road, Hamilton East near the KFC, Silverdale Road, Belgian Gardens, Aeroglen, somewhere near the Cairns town centre,  Queens Club Gardens (out of my depth in this part of town!), Hammersmith, opposite the Basilica di San Domenico in Perugia, South Clapham, Fulham, beside Auckland’s Northwestern Motorway, dodgy end of Brighton Road, Grey Lynn, Pt Chevalier, Grey Lynn again, Parnell, one of the seven Walnut Streets in Boston, Stanmore Bay, Mt Eden, Newmarket right next to the train tracks, Birkenheadale (term of endearment for that part of the Shore), Milford, Stanmore Bay, near the Edgeware shops in Christchurch. 

All up, a total of 32 homeowners whose mortgages I have had some part in helping to repay. You’re welcome and grazie mille to old man Rossetti churning through foreign students in Italy where our only 2mX2m windowless bathroom had a shower nozzle that hung precariously over the toilet. Don’t ask! 

At one  point  I ended up renting a place that was only a few hundred metres from where I was born - my journey from a womb to a rented room was complete. 

I’ve seen it all in my time as a renter executive. In our Hammersmith flat in London, our landlord failed to tell us he’d done a bit of DIY work on the property prior to us moving in and poured concrete down the drain. The whole place clogged up faster than the port-a-loos at an Indian food festival. 

I briefly resided in a room, nicknamed the coffin, in Boston where my only way in or out was directly through the other bedrooms of my sleeping roommates and their girlfriends/boyfriends. Slightly awkward when I needed a midnight wee.  

And on the subject of relieving oneself. There was that time a male flatmate mistakenly did just that, not in the bathroom but on me in the middle of the night after a heavy drinking session.

Our whole Hamilton flat was struck down with a gastro bug when we ignored the greenish tinge in the swimming pool and just dove on in one hot summer’s day. 

Moving into the Cairns suburb of Aeroglen should have raised alarm bells. Sleep was  interrupted regularly at 4am every morning with a 747 flying in just over our back garden on final approach. Hoever, in Milford we lucked it with one of the most amazing views out to the Hauraki Gulf and a stone's throw from the beach. 

In a Townsville home, I was showering not long after moving in when a giant goanna slithered its way into the bathroom. Turns out if you shout at it in mock Japanese they get a little freaked out and leave. This did not work so well for the hundreds of maggots that began migrating from our oven in the same home when we left food scraps in there overnight. Ah, the tropics! 

“Weirdly I don’t feel bad about the rent expense. What’s astounding, are the 32 rentals in 33 years!”

So many rentals…and so many that when I was a journalist in Hamilton in the early 90s I even wrote a feature about renting for the Waikato Times. Back then, I didn’t know I would be a serial renter and I only had around half a dozen places under my belt. Amateur. 

But now, approaching my mid 50s I stepped into the mortgage broking services of a nice young man called Alex in Christchurch and said, I kid you not: “I’m buying a house, how does this work?” while gesticulating towards the various mortgage broking services and information on the table. 

Here’s where I disclose that I have been a business journalist for the top financial paper in New Zealand & I have scripted, researched and directed a television show called My House My Castle. I even worked on a documentary about the pitfalls of dealing with real estate agents. Slap on the head emoji. I didn’t really pay attention. House buying was for other people. 

Was it a good or bad move and exactly how much have I spent on a lifetime of renting? Is this a cautious lesson to the Gen Z’ers who can’t afford to buy a home? Am I the only one pondering the opportunity cost of doing other stuff v owning a home?

So when I first started renting it coincided with my first real proper job. The one I had aborted a commerce degree for after going to journalism school. I started at Rupert Murdoch’s INL as a cub reporter at the bastion of groundbreaking news - The North Shore Times. For that, I was paid the princely sum of $303.50 a week. Don’t ask me how I remember that but it sounds like my grandad telling me when I was 10 that he earned a thruppence doing his paper round. 

In today’s money, inflation adjusted, I was paid $113,000. You'd be hard pressed to get that kind of money starting off in a creative job nowadays. Income earning potential for creative work has been Benjamin Buttoned and my ATI journalism tutor Jim Tucker was right when he said on day one of our course: “If you’re here to get rich then maybe journalism isn’t for you.”  Actually Jim should have added: “Go study economics instead and learn about inflation and the fiscal impact on job security for future generations.”

About the time I was throwing myself into a dying profession, home ownership in New Zealand was booming. In 1990 the average house price here was $125,440 and the following year, home ownership reached its highest rate ever of 73.8%. 

But I was happily starting my rental journey and that journey did not stop until last year. So how much in 30 something years have I spent on rent? 

I tapped into the know-how, as I often do, of my economist friend Shane Vuletich who runs a business called Fresh Info. He has known me for 20 something years and was once convinced that with my transient lifestyle I’d wind up old, directing traffic on Karangahape Road with a gin bottle at 3am. He probably didn’t see me pruning roses in Christchurch. 

Shane’s thoughts on home ownership v renting have changed. “ I would have said 10 years ago it made a lot more sense to buy a house but now it’s cheaper to rent,” he said. That’s basic economics of house prices v rental incomes. For landlords, yields are low and they'd be best to stick it in the bank - but flip the coin and it works well for renters. His philosophy has switched from working and buying a home to becoming an entrepreneur earlier and not having to work for the man so you can afford a home you want, where you want.  

Back to my rental bill. Factoring in exchange rates, inflation and memory loss - I figured over the period from 1991 to 2024 - 33 years - I have paid around $874,000 in rent. That’s about the same amount we just spent on buying a house in Christchurch. 

Shane, ever the numbers guy, stated that if I had purchased a house in 1991, I would probably have paid the mortgage three times over by now. 

But weirdly I don’t feel bad about the rent expense. What’s astounding, are the 32 rentals in 33 years - it sounds on par with Italy’s turnover of government.  My decision to rent was an opportunity cost right? In that time I’ve got my private pilots licence, worked on some awesome television productions, travelled to nearly 80 countries, worked and studied overseas, started my own business, took a year off playing sport full time, climbed some of the world’s highest mountains, learnt to scuba dive, walked 4500 km from Mexico to Canada & I met my husband. We married and if we had had kids, maybe the house thing might have happened sooner. I’m not dying with any regrets. 

Actually while living overseas, I realised home ownership is a real Kiwi obsession. And by that I mean it’s talked about a lot among friends and in the media. This wasn’t something I experienced overseas. Home ownership around the world swings wildly from places like Laos and China at 96% down to Switzerland at 42%. Here in New Zealand - it’s currently around 66%.  It’s usually mature rental markets that have lower rates of home ownership. Spaniards and Italians I talked to in bigger cities happily rented during much of their working lives in town but dreamed and often saved towards owning a house and retiring to the Mediterranean. 

My Mediterranean turned out to be a house in Marshland. It’s a Christchurch suburb that sounds like a place where Shrek and Princess Fiona reside in the Kingdom of Far Far Away from paying off our mortgage.