Buying a first home...hints and tips

[Peg]

and beware of auctions

there are some dodgy realestate auctioneers out there and at some auctions they plant dummy bidders to push the price up.

If you can find something 'for sale' as opposed to 'for auction' you'd be better off going for it to save yourself the runaround.

and if you find something you like that is going for auction and its a rainy day, you should go to it because the stats show that rainy day's attract less bidders.

[Lulu]

I'd never buy at auction - but they are interesting to watch.

[AnyDream]

Check with your state government if you fall into a low income category, as some of them run subsidised loan schemes. My sister qualified for being a single parent, basically it's a reduced rate of interest and your repayments are tiered against your income, rather than against interest rates (this is in South Australia). Worth looking into IMO.

We spent about 6 months watching the market (yes that means watching the newspapers & websites but also networking with r.e. agents in the area you're interested in) and went to lots and lots of opens to get an idea of what features etc are available in what price range. The house we finally bought was a lot more modest - and therefore priced a lot lower- than others we'd seen BUT had all the core features we wanted (think things like fencing, garages, usability of kitchen & bathroom in their current state, age of hot water & heating/cooling systems, condition of roof etc) without needing to spend any $$ on maintenance in the short term.

[Lulu]

Check with your state government if you fall into a low income category, as some of them run subsidised loan schemes. My sister qualified for being a single parent, basically it's a reduced rate of interest and your repayments are tiered against your income, rather than against interest rates (this is in South Australia). Worth looking into IMO.

I worry about this - I'm not sure if it's exactly the same but this was done in Vic about 10 (?) years ago and ended in people never managing to make a dent in their debts and a huge class action against the govt.

[Lilly-Pilly]

Thanks for the imput so far. I don't think I'd ever go down the auction path, having said that, all this is just a thought process at the moment. Much more to learn and find out about.
What expenses are involved in buliding from scratch, as in before the actual house planning etc?
My plan at this stage is save more, then like Cammelot said, it would be a simple little place that can be done up over time to make me love it more, the nice newish place can wait for a while now!
Love to hear more from everyone

[Lulu]

I got hold of both my (cheap) little do-er uppers before they even got advertised. I visited all the RE's in the area and made it clear what I wanted and I got a couple of callbacks.

[fionas]

It's hard to get a bargain these days but ...

if you see something that's advertised for auction and the RE agent doesn't have many properties in that area/suburb then they could have picked up the client because they've offered them reduced fees - meaning the seller is wanting to save a dollar here and there so might be quite eager to sell. This particularly applies to deceased estates or where the seller is elderly and needs a deposit on a nursing home place. Often they are prepared to take an offer before auction on the basis of one in the hand is worth two in the bush and it can be way below what they would get at auction. DP's family did this when selling FIL's home and our next-door-neighbour also sold her house for what I (and her RE agent) both estimated to be at least $50K below what she would have got at auction.

You can generally tell if it's an older person's house by the style of furniture/decor.

[wysiwyg]

Is true mortgage insurance can be expensive but you also have to take into account the length of time it will take you to save up the extra deposit and what might happen to house prices in the meantime and the money you are paying out in rent etc. Often if you do the figures at the rate house prices are rising currently it works out better to say have a 10% deposit and pay mortgage insurance than spend another year renting to save the 20%.

Auctions are not always a bad thing particularly if you can be quite emotionally detached about a place so are not going to be pushed higher than you think is worth. The area I live in if wasn't prepared to go to auction would have reduced properties available by about 70%. Places do sell prior to auction occasionally, and often you can gleen info from an agent about why someone is selling and how likely they are to accept an offer prior to auction.

We were relatively new to Australia when we started looking to buy (a year or so here) so hadn't a clue really about how system worked over here and found this book which we got out the local library useful

The insiders guide to buying real estate [text] : by someone who buys real estate for a living / Patrick A. Bright.

Although this book does recommend seeing 100 properties before you start getting serious so you can get a good idea of the market and are able to value places quickly - so it ruined a fair few Saturdays for me - I think we had seen 92 when bought ours.