Kristin Savage

It sounds really obvious, but i’ve vocabularised for myself why owning is better more secure than renting (a house) in the long term.

Look at the cost of both renting & repayments.

e.g.

The Homeowner: Grovels to save a deposit for who knows how long, finds a house, pays rates, insurance etc, makes weekly repayments of, let’s say $500 per week.

The Renter: Chooses a place, moves in, pays $400 per week, no rates or house insurance to worry about.

Here’s the thing… The Homeowner purchases not just a house, but the right to the security of having ever-lessening repayments each week year. The renter forgoes that security, and whilst paying less now, is at the mercy of rent increases and supply of good rentals forever!

I really don’t care either way…. it’s an old fashioned kiwi cliche the whole “get into a house mate”. Just had a moment of clarity about how it all works.

… So it’s a smaller slice, but it’s a bigger pie, and a real pie. It’s also most likely that there’ll be things you can do better than most of the current providers of the ‘old product idea’.

Rowan Simpson made some thought provoking comments a while ago in this post about the need to solve a problem, rather than just doing ’something’.

I’ve learnt that Innovation for the sake of innovation won’t take you anywhere without a market. I also learnt from this post that the importance of a market is paramount. Product and team are sideshows.

• Innovation applied well: Where something with a different angle solves a problem; supply then meets demand, and there you have your market.

• Innovation applied badly: Where something is flash but unwanted. Supply is there but not demand. What use are underpants with rockets when they burn your bum? Who cares if they’re innovative.

Ahh, the bigger pie.

A friend who is currently staying with us put me onto this 2008 election year gimmick.

Cameron Brewer, a guy from Auckland has set himself up as Charles Ashe MP, showing a day in the life of an MP in election year. Pretty funny. Check it out here. Looks pretty authentic. Apparently he used to be Jenny Shipley and John Banks’ media spin doctors/PR secretary.

;^)