Own or Rent
1) This is a very interesting debate that never seems to end
2) Let’s look at this with a different perspective
3) As we are evolving as à society things are changing very fast
4) More car models per year, ever changing fashion trends, newer kinds of homes being constructed and so on and so forth
5) If you go back 50 years and beyond when the status symbol trend began, you will notice that the pace of change was too slow
6) So owning a great house meant one could kind of differentiate themselves for a very long time because that kind of a house wouldn’t get made for many years to come
7) The same is to do with cars and fashion
8) The number of customers was less as prosperity was limited
9) This slowness of evolution made ‘buying’ a good choice
10) Because one could buy & differentiate oneself for several years at a stretch
11) There were few who could own the stuff back then
12) Today things are just the opposite
13) More people are buying things
14) More things are being produced
15) General affluence is on the rise
16) Prices are on the decline because of demand and volume
17) But most importantly the rate of change has gone up
18) Obsolescence or going out of fashion and becoming irrelevant is the biggest threat against the concept of buying
19) Cars back then were kept for 10 to 20 years. This is down to 1 to 2 years
20) People didn’t change their furniture for 10 to 15 years. Now people remodel their homes every 5 years
21) A TV stood still at this place for 10 years and today expensive mobile phones get changed within a year
22) This has given rise to a culture of subscription in some categories
23) Subscription is in a sense like the concept of Rent
24) Going forward as the pace of change enhances sharing, renting, subscription models are likely to become the new normal
25) If you buy a beautiful house costing Rs 5 cr. & in a couple of years new generation homes start coming up, you either deprive yourself of getting a better experience or you have to sell cheap and buy high
26) In the subscription model or rent based model or exchange model, people keep moving around products and services a lot more seamlessly experiencing new trends as they come up
27) Human beings desire change and freshness; new kinds of experiences
28) Look at how Airbnb opened up the holiday market by providing more choices
29) The world is becoming integrated through media, communication and travel
30) We are changing fast and so are the buying models
31) One needs to look at renting as a mode of buying
32) Instead of buying new phones, a time will come when we become members of a One Plus Club, pay annual fees and the company keeps upgrading our phones as they develop newer models
I rest my case
