Discover how to be a smart first home buyer
14 December 2015
So, you’re about to venture into the great unknown of buying property. Congratulations! The post Discover how to be a smart first home buyer appeared first on Aspect Buyer's Agency.
So, you’re about to venture into the great unknown of buying property. Congratulations! You’ve been saving your pretty pennies for a good few years, and according to the major banks’ website calculators, you’ve got enough put away for a deposit on your first home.
Buying a first home is momentous in any person’s life. For most, it comes with a mixed bag of emotions. There’s the obvious excitement; afterall, buying your first home is basically an initiation ritual into adulthood, but then there’s the other, less anticipated emotions:
- Uncertainty – will the bank actually lend you the money?
- Anxiety – waiting for the pre-approval on your loan
- Overwhelm – you’ve been scouting the online real estate sites, and there’s so many properties to choose from, how do you know which one is for you? Buy established, off the plan or build? So many options!
- Euphoria – you’ve been pre-approved, now home ownership is yours
- Delirium – now you can legitimately start house hunting, so you book out your weekends to circumnavigate the listings of open-homes and you spend every waking hour perusing the internet for your ‘meant-to-be’ first home
- You’re in love – after months of trudging through countless front doors, you’ve found the one. The moment you cross the threshold, you know you’ve found your happy ever after
Ok, we’re going to stop it right there. Do you know what happens at this point? You become emotionally invested in the purchase of your first home, and in our experience, this leads to drastic, illogical, and heartfelt decision making. It rarely fares well for the undiscerning first home buyer. We’ve seen first home buyers willing to bid much higher then they can afford and more than the house is worth. We’ve seen first home buyers take on homes that didn’t pass the pest inspection, or were so far beyond repair that they would need to borrow another 50% of their current borrowings just to make it liveable.
Purchasing from the heart is simply, ill advised. Yet, it continues to happen, and real estate agents, who work on behalf of the home seller, happily take advantage of the emotional purchaser.
So, first home-buyer. How do you escape falling in love with your first choice of home and becoming another emotionally-charged statistic? Firstly, let’s reiterate a statement from the last paragraph.
Real estate agents work on behalf of the home seller.
What this means, is they want the highest possible price for the seller. They are not invested in you, the buyer’s, interest at all. And yet, most first home-buyers, actually, most home-buyers and property investors in general, tend to rely on real estate agents to do the work of securing their ideal property for them.
Real estate agents represent the seller and they get paid by the seller. The higher the price they get, the higher their commission.
Buyer’s agents, on the other hand, work for the buyer. We are licensed professionals who specialise in searching, evaluating and negotiating the purchase of your first home on your behalf.
Using a buyer’s agent will save you time, money and stress during the property search and the negotiation phase of buying your first home. More than this, though, a buyer’s agent will ensure that you don’t make an emotional purchase decision that can have dire long-term consequences.
Buy smart. Hire a buyer’s agent to buy on your behalf.
