Buying your First Home

Buying any real estate is a stressful, draining and emotional experience for anyone. As a real estate agent I know the typical tricks and antics the market can play on buyers, but it wasnt until I purchased my first home that I truly realised exactly what it is like to purchase real estate.

In previous issues ive talked about the mistakes and things to avoid for first home buyers (and really any purchaser), but I want to talk about the actual purchase from the perspective of a first home buyer and things you need to know and should be doing.

First thing you need to do is see a good mortgage broker. There is no point shopping without money, you need to know how much you can spend and whether you can truly fund the purchase.

Once you have your finance you can start your research, now I call it research because you should be looking at every property in a large area. The internet is fantastic for allowing you to view hundreds of properties in an area. You need to know what different homes are selling for in the area, what their inclusions are and how they compare to what you will be primarily looking to buy.

This next point is generation specific, if you are younger than 30 you will be more prone to discounting homes based entirely on the way they look on the internet. Please devote yourself to going and actually seeing homes because the marketing presentation of a home can be drastically different to its reality. You need to familiarise yourself with aspects, warmth and cool actual room size and the neighbours.

Once you actually find a home, the difficult part starts, negotiating. There are many tricks that unethical agents can play on buyers; first home buyers are even more susceptible as they are less likely to recognise they are being taken for a ride and they generally have an emotional attachment to the property by this stage: There are two things you need to remember. Firstly, its a business transaction, lose the emotion. Secondly, dont play games. Everyone knows a real estate “expert” who may have been in the property game at some point in time, do not listen to these people as they will hurt you in the long run. If you see a property you like, work out what you think it is worth to you, what your maximum walk away price is, the point where if it sold to another buyer for a thousand dollars more you wouldnt mind, and offer that. If it is an auction, do the same thing, work out your walkaway price and do not bid any higher.

Remember, as first home buyer there is a good chance you will be staying in the property market for the rest of your life, so an extra five or ten thousand dollars now isnt going to make a huge difference thirty years from now, so if you find something that you really do like, as I did, pay the extra to secure it and enjoy it, there is a good chance in a decade you will have made your money back in gains anyway.

If you want to speak about your experience buying your first home, or would like any advice, please contact me.