Setting off on an expedition to Mt Debt
started hunting for his first home in September. This is his fourth opinion piece about the trials and tribulations of trying to get a foot on the property ladder.
It seems I’m getting closer to trying for myself one of New Zealand’s most overrated mountaineering attempts - a two person ascent of Mt Debt.
The responsibility of getting to base camp (Camp Deposit) largely fell on the girlfriend and it didn’t take long to get approval for the mission from the mountain authority (the BNZ for this route).
But I just don’t know if I’ve got enough oxygen in the tank to get to the top.
Come to think about it, do we even want to start climbing? What’s the view like at the top? And how many bodies might we find along the way?
The more boring version is that we now have pre-approval for what seems to us to be a ridiculously large amount of money.
Objectively it’s a ridiculous amount of money too when compared to our incomes, about five times more borrowing than our gross household income would be. It’s terrifying. And it presents us with another dilemma - the bank is willing to lend us at least $100,000 more than we had wanted to spend on a house.
So in this bonkers housing market where house prices are increasing far more than current interest rates, should we stretch things a little bit more and buy a house in a better suburb or on a better street than we thought we would be able to?
If we did, would we reap the rewards with sweet sweet capital gains (unrealised and untaxable because we would live in in the house, of course), or be taking on an unjustifiable additional amount of risk?
Should we consider borrowing a bit more and maybe do some renovation work upfront instead of doing it bit by bit as we squirrel away enough money for a bathroom or kitchen every couple of years?
We probably shouldn’t tweak our TradeMe search criteria and start searching for slightly more expensive houses.
But will we be able to resist doing it? I’m not sure. All I know is that as long as you make it to the top, the higher the mountain, the more impressed people are when you knock the bastard off.