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First home buyer? Here’s what you need to know

The thought of buying your first house can be a daunting one, especially with all the complications involved. Despite this, some factors play a much more important role as opposed to others, and if you were to only focus on a few things, these would be it.

Rent or own?

Perhaps the first thing that comes to mind when purchasing your home is whether to rent or own.

For the young couple or person who isn’t as financially stable as other individuals and families, renting tends to be the standard option, though don’t be too quick to hop on the bandwagon.

Before making any judgments, ensure that you do your research on the property and acquire expert opinions, often people go on renting not knowing that they could be saving a lot of money by buying.

Financial situation

Your personal financial situation has almost everything to do with buying your first home, especially if your renting.

The first thing that banks almost always look at is your reliability and history, this tells them about your ability to meet repayments and to be stable.

Your employment history, security, and financial situation will also have a pivotal effect on the way the banks perceive you. If you are self-employed, ensure that you have sufficient documentation that can further verify your credibility.

The reason the above is so important is that it addresses the foundation that everything else lays upon, if you are renting and cannot obtain a loan from a bank, then you might as well forget about buying your first home. Ensure you clear any account that has overdue debt to avoid the above.

Buyer’s Agent

Although traditionally buyer’s agents aren’t commonly used, they are becoming more vital for first home buyers in today’s world and property market. Before reading the benefits, ensure that if you do choose to hire a buyer’s agent, that you do your research and find someone with a reputable history.

Benefits include:

  • Save time, no useless visits to incompatible real estate agents.
  • Experienced professional finding lowest prices based on your situation.
  • A buyers agent has a perspective of both sides of the property market, silent and publicly advertised. Therefore you won’t miss anything.
  • Trained negotiating skills, ensures that you get the best deal and aren’t taken advantage of.

Various other benefits can be noted, though, for the most part, buyers agents are just an authority figure that can show the way in person for first home buyers to instill confidence in their decisions.

Logic over emotions

As basic as it sounds, always make sure that your thinking with a clear and logical thought process or you could end up with some serious regret and debt.

No matter how good a house looks when you’re in it and looking at the interior, if it exceeds your budget, either wait longer to accumulate the funds or choose another, the last thing you want is waking up months or years later upon a mountain of debt.

One of the best ways to do this is always to review your budget, and to mark off any of the properties that don’t deem compatible.

Buying your first home is both an extremely stressful and exciting period of your life.

To ensure you experience more of the latter, visit our website for more information.