The thing about property ownership

Is it simply the fact that you paid money to acquire some material object like a house or a car or an original Van Gogh? That you made a transaction which proves that the object is now yours and this is recorded on a piece of paper? That you live in your home and therefore the old rule of “possession is nine tenths of the law” is correct?

So, go out and buy a house for a million dollars. You will soon realise that despite all the hard work you put into saving the deposit and slaving your guts out to pay the monthly mortgage, it is not really yours. So don’t kid yourself.

You see there are always lots of other interests at work in your new property; your wife or husband, your kids, and the bank which has a stake in it.

This is not to mention your mother-in-law (bless her soul) who also has a vested interest and relatives who you have not even heard of and live hidden under rocks. They also may be interested in a wind-fall if you pass away without leaving a Will.

Things don’t just suddenly belong to us.

This is an out-dated concept dreamt up by feudal lords in the Middle Ages who had no better way to explain how they could lend their land for a short time as long as you paid for it and then they get it back.

And then you need to think too that ownership is just a transitory thing. You get divorced (as many of us do) and suddenly your property is split in two. Or your business goes down the tubes and your home is foreclosed because you have missed the mortgage payments for months.

And then the divorce goes through, and you are out on your own in the cold world whilst you try to keep up with the mortgage payments and pay child support for your off-spring too.

The real word to use in this argument is “borrowed” and not “owned”.

So don’t feel smug; because we do not live forever and we can only enjoy the things we possess for a short time, and then we leave the world, bare-assed the same way we came into it.

There is an interesting theory going around that things attach themselves to us. Like jewels and handbags to women and sports cars and fast boats to men.

We don’t really need them but they find their way to us. We have no choice because these objects are made from virtual atoms which have been trained to search out potential hosts.

And then they live in your brain; and go around your mind like tiny robots which bribe your neurons with sweet dreams and persuade you to buy more things - and life goes on.

Never take things for granted, because they never are.

About Tim Mansfield
Article contributed by Tim Mansfield, a 30 year global veteran in the real estate industry and Founder and CEO of Sydney-based Buyers’ Agency PrimePropertyBuyer at https://www.primepropertybuyer.com.au/ 

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