It's Your Home. Own That.

Let's talk about the elephant in the room — or more accurately, the smug comment at the dinner party.

You know the one. That moment where someone finds out you rent and gives you the look. Or worse, actually says it out loud. "Oh, you're still renting?" Said with that particular tone that implies you are somehow behind in life, falling short, not quite there yet.

Here's what I want to say to that.

Almost everyone started as a renter. And while you might own your home now — do you really own it? Or does the bank? Because until that final mortgage repayment is made, the bank has a very significant claim over that house you've spent years pouring your heart into. Miss enough repayments through no fault of your own — a job loss, a health crisis, a global pandemic — and the bank can take it. Everything you worked for, gone.

Me? If my landlord decides to sell, yes, that's beyond my control. But I find another rental. I don't lose everything. I am owned by no one.

Now, I'm not saying renting is without its frustrations — believe me, I could write a whole book about that. Oh wait. I am. 😄

What I am saying is that renting is not a consolation prize. It is not a waiting room you sit in until your real life begins. It is your life, happening right now, in the home you are living in today.

And the renters who struggle most? In my experience, it's not the ones dealing with difficult landlords or tiny kitchens or walls they can't paint. It's the ones who have absorbed that "it's not really mine" mindset so deeply that they've stopped caring. Mismatched furniture thrown together with zero intention. Bare walls because they're too scared to put up a single picture hook. Gardens left to die because why bother?

Here's why you bother: because you live there.

Not for the owner. Not for the agent. Not to impress anyone at a dinner party. For you. For the way it feels to walk through your front door at the end of a long day and into a space that wraps around you like a hug. For the garden you sit in on a Sunday morning with a coffee that nobody else tended but you. For the gallery wall that makes you smile every single time you walk past it.

My agents have never once complained about how I keep a home. They walk in, jaws drop, and spend the inspection telling me how incredible it looks. Not because I'm performing for them — but because I genuinely love where I live and it shows.

So to the homeowners who look down: remember where you started. And to the renters who've given up: your home deserves better than that.

And so do you. 🤍