Congratulations! You’ve decided the time is right to buy your first home. You will probably have a million questions running through your head and may not know where to start.
Lucky for you, I have been in your shoes and have helped many others on this journey. And I would like to share all of the things I’ve learnt with you.
Let’s start with the basics… Know your budget!!! It is easy to get excited when you start looking for your dream home, but without knowing what your budget is, you’re excitement can quickly turn to disappointment when you realise that it is a little bit beyond what you can afford.
Start with visiting your broker so that they can determine what you can afford and take into account what deposit you will need.
Once you have your price range, it’s time to think about what is essential to your current and future needs.
Location will be one of the biggest considerations you need to make. Do you want a home close to work, close to the kids’ school or close to family and friends? Make sure this suits your needs for the future, too, as you will likely be in this home for several years. You may not be able to get into your top suburb of choice with your first home, so think about adjoining suburbs that have good growth indicators. Hopefully, after a few years, your property has increased in value to the point where you can sell and move to your favourite suburb or even use the equity to start growing your property portfolio.
Refine your search by having a list that includes the number of bedrooms, bathrooms, car spaces etc that you need – once again, make sure you think about what could happen in the next few years. This will help you when searching online for properties, as you can use the filters so that only the properties that meet your minimum requirements will show up.
You should now start to get an understanding of what your budget can get you. Is it what you were expecting?
If yes, that’s great news… start getting a list of homes together to inspect next weekend. Send us the address, and we can help with ordering property profile reports, which give you the indicative value of the home along with some other useful information and insights.
If no, be prepared that you may either need to wait a bit longer to build up more of a deposit, you might need to look in different areas or you might need to do some work to fix it up.
Now, if you are up to the point where you are inspecting properties, make sure you don’t get “caught up in the moment”. The photos in the ads will generally focus on one or two of the property’s best aspects, which can be misleading, as they may have been enhanced or used a wide-angle lens, which makes smaller spaces appear bigger. But this could also mean that some properties that don’t look as great in photos might be better in real life, so don’t discount them. Get ready to spend your weekends going from open home to open home.
Just to give you a heads up, when you’re attending an open home…there will be people everywhere. There is usually nice music playing and lovely scented candles burning away with the immaculate furnishings in place. You instantly feel like this could be your home!
Stop!!! Get your list out and make sure you look beyond all of that! Take your time!
Does the kitchen function the way you want it to – is there enough bench space, does it have all the appliances, or do your existing ones fit? Is the bathroom big enough for everyone? Is the house layout right for your needs? Is there enough storage? Is it safe for the kids? Is there gas? What sort of hot water system does it have? Does it have solar panels? Does it have a yard?
Now, most of these things can be changed or added once you move in, but will you have time and money to do this? This is why it is important to know what is most important to you before you start attending open homes. Include all the little details that you appreciate in your current home like that infinity hot water system or ducted heating.
Make a spreadsheet if needed… property address vs all the requirements that you have. Then at the end of the weekend, you can easily identify the top properties in your list and arrange for second viewings if required. If the property has a specific feature that you really liked but it wasn’t on the list, write it down. That big park across the road could be the deciding factor.
Your perfect home wasn’t there on that first weekend? That’s fine, you don’t need to compromise, you just need some patience. This is most likely the biggest purchase you’ve ever made so don’t rush into it and allow this to become a memorable experience for all the right reasons.
If you have any more questions, feel free to give us a call 1300 815 921 or click here to arrange a no-obligation meeting so we can discuss it further.