With over 20 years’ experience, we know property.

Before you start spending hours online looking for your new home or your weekends at open for inspections, the first thing you should do is talk to your broker or bank to see what your budget will be. It is pointless & heartbreaking to find the perfect home to then find out you can’t afford it.

You will also need to find out whether the bank will lend you ‘conditionally’ or ‘unconditionally’. This will determine whether you are able to bid at auctions or you are restricted to private sales. Be aware an auction is a cash unconditional contract that cannot be subject to finance. Make sure you are very clear on this.

By talking to you bank first and obtaining a pre-approval you will put yourself in a better position to negotiate once you have found your new home.

Before you spend hours and hours online and dragging the family through countless open homes, sit down and make a ‘wish list’ of perhaps the ten most important things for your new home. They may vary from location, to the number of living areas, to the land size.

Once you have your ‘wish list’ done it’s time to start looking for suitable homes that meet your criteria. It’s very rare that you will find your ten out of ten home, so if you can tick seven or more boxes on the wish list you should consider the home.

Very few buyers actually research enough when they buy a home. You should be researching sales in the area that have occurred over the last few months, properties that are currently on the market and their asking price, the average days on market, the most commonly used method of sale in the area, school zones and which agents have the listings in your price bracket.

As a buyer you can become an area expert very quickly and have just as much market knowledge about price as the local agents within a few weeks. This knowledge will help you at the negotiation table and can save you tens of thousands of dollars.

Most buyers see the agent as the enemy. The agent’s job is to bring a buyer and seller together and whilst their priority is to negotiate on the owner’s behalf, they also need you, the buyer, to make the deal happen.

Agents can be a great source of information so build relationships with them, ask them to keep you up to date with recent sales and listing and tell them what you are looking for. Agents will go out of their way to help a buyer they know is ready to buy.

We would highly recommend you ask agents to present ‘off market’ opportunities to you. These are properties that suit your criteria and the owners are selling but they haven’t come to market yet. ‘Off market’ properties are great because you are not competing with the market and other buyers for the home.

Once you have found ‘the one’, it’s time to start negotiating but slow down and don’t rush it. I would recommend that you have a solicitor or conveyancer check the Section 32 statement and contract and check if there are any restrictions on the land at council.

We would also recommend that you have a builder check the home to see it is structurally sound and a pest inspector to make sure there are not termites. These inspections can be done prior to making an offer or be added to the contract as a special condition.

OK, so you have found the right home, done the above checks and are ready to make an offer.

If you have done your research on price and other available homes on the market you should have all the information to negotiate with the agent. Remember, negotiate hard but fair. In my experience, making low offers only gets the owner offside and makes the whole negotiation more difficult. Yes, you want to buy it for the cheapest possible price but the owner and the agent know all the comparable sales as well, so why would they sell cheap?

Start a bit lower than what you really think it’s worth (say 5.00%), and negotiate from there.

Once you have successfully purchased your new home make sure you understand all the conditions of the contract. When is the deposit due, how long do you have to obtain finance, how long do you have to get the building and pest inspection done and when is settlement?

As settlement nears you are entitled to conduct a final inspection to make sure the property is in the same condition as when you purchased it. We recommend this is done in the last week before settlement.

Remember to get all your services connected for move in day.

Congratulations, we hope you and your family love your new home.