Buying residential can be incredibly emotional, determining a budget of what you can spend on a property is paramount to ensuring you don’t turn into someone paying overs for a property and ultimately ending up with buyers regret.
For some setting a budget is relatively easy (if this is you go to step 2.)
If you need some help here are some actionable ways to determine what you can afford.
Given that this will be your first property purchase it will be more than likely you will be requiring finance.
My recommendation is to use a local mortgage broker rather than go into a bank.
Bank Vs Mortgage Broker: A mortgage broker assesses your current financial position (savings, loans, income, expenses) and will recommend a bank/lending institution that has the best rate at any given time. A bank also does the same assessment however they won’t recommend you use a different bank/lending institution.
Pre-Approval: A pre-approval is something you have to apply for and need to obtain in order to put an offer on a property. You can not offer on a property unless you have your pre-approval. Pre-approval’s do expire, when you receive your pre-approval it will advise when it will lapse.
Don’t stress if your pre-approval lapses, if you have got it before you can get it again (providing your circumstances haven’t changed)
Borrowing Capacity: Whether you choose a mortgage broker or deal directly with a bank, they will advise what your borrowing capacity is once you have received your pre-approval. This borrowing capacity is what we call our ceiling budget, we can’t exceed this amount.
If you’re borrowing capacity is $750,000 that does not mean that needs to be your budget needs to be $750,000 (remember you need to pay this off for the next 30 years)
Assistance Schemes: As a first home buyer you may have the ability to access some assistance schemes set by the government. Your broker will be able to advise on what may be available.
Your Patch: Once we have identified our borrowing capacity we now need to shortlist where you want to live. Using the ‘Your Patch’ map we need to work out what areas you would like to live in and afford.
After all these steps you will have created your budget.
Buying residential can be incredibly emotional, determining a budget of what you can spend on a property is paramount to ensuring you don’t turn into someone paying overs for a property and ultimately ending up with buyers regret.
For some setting a budget is relatively easy (if this is you go to step 2.)
If you need some help here are some actionable ways to determine what you can afford.
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