Getting Ready To Buy

You’ve done your research and feel like it’s time to buy a home. What do you need to sort out before you can shop for real?

Remember, any advice provided on this website is of a general nature only and does not take into account your personal needs, objectives and financial circumstances. You should consider whether it is appropriate for your situation.

You’ve now got the essentials: the types of people you might need, a rough budget, how to calculate interest, and a clear deposit goal. So how do you turn this info into action?

Know your priorities

Before you start, write down what's important and rank them. Adapt it as you go. If you inspect an apartment with a north-facing balcony and realise you can't live without one, add it to the list.

Compromise is a big part of house hunting. The chances of finding a place with everything you want, at the price you want to pay, in the right location is gonna be tough. So to make things easier, identify the non-negotiables, and the nice-to-haves.

If you're buying with others, you're probably going to need to compromise even further, which means really honing your top priorities.

Remember, too, that you're likely to stay in this place for a while, so your circumstances might change. In years to come, will your favourite neighbourhood still have everything you need? What if a new love interest wants to move in one day? Living above a bar is fun right now, but will you still love it if you end up on the early shift?

Know your suburbs and median prices

It pays to get to know an area before you decide to move into it.

Suburb guides are one way to get the background info. You can get reports from places like Domain and realestate.com.au. These guides list median prices - that's the property right in the middle of the low-high list of properties (that's different from the average). Median property price can give you an idea of what you could expect to pay, especially if you're also keeping a close eye on what's being bought and sold in your chosen area.

These guides also cover what kinds of households live nearby (couples, families, retirees, dog colonies), local amenities, schools, green space and shops. More comprehensive guides even list things like crime rates, and political leanings.

Home Zone

When you’re ready with a clear vision of what you’re planning to buy and have a fair-sized deposit for that style of place, it might be time to understand how much you can borrow.

With Up, we make this process easy with the Home Zone which gives you an indication of how much you can borrow using your Up spending insights.

Pre-approval

This is where your information is verified (including a check of your credit history). Plus, we cover you for a $400 property valuation, saving you both time and money.

What you'll need to get pre-approval

To determine whether they can give you conditional pre-approval, lenders look at the same kind of information they would if you were really, truly applying for a mortgage, including:

• Your income and expenses

• How much deposit you've saved, and

• The price range of the properties you're into.

They'll also want to know what sort of property you want to buy, and where: some kinds of property will feel safer to them than others. After all, technically they're buying this with you, and in the beginning it's likely that they'll have more $$ invested in it than you will.

Get comfy with some different ways

In Australia, property is usually sold either at auction or via private sale. As the buyer, what you need to do will change according to the sale method.

It's worth not only knowing the major different ways to buy, but actually going along to a few sales you have no intention of buying at. You can build a strategy, see what places really sell for (pro tip: check the 'sold' section of the apps, not just the 'for sale' bit), and get your confidence up. The property market can move quickly, so you want to be as ready as possible to act fast and secure your dream place before someone else does.

We'll talk more later about the ins and outs of how this actually works. For now, make a note of the sale method and practise your subtle auction hand wave.

Some other things to consider

Taking your time, getting pre approval, doing your research and keeping tabs on sale events can mean potentially enduring a long wait, but also potentially put you in a good position as you learn.

It's a good time to get familiar not only with the things we've mentioned above, but also hundreds of weird little things that can happen in the property market.

There's boardroom sales, 'best and final' offers, 'off the plan' buying, and even writing letters to the owners of houses you like. Any of these could be part of your journey and there's so much to explore and learn.