What buying our first home
First-home buyers are easy game in a sometimes vicious housing market. Shabnam Dastgheib tells her story.
Buying your first home is a big step into the unknown. It’s hard to explain that queasy feeling when you draw down a huge amount of debt and take a step into the rundown little home you’ve received in exchange. That’s how it felt for us when we bought our first home in Auckland in 2014.
In a matter of weeks we went from being baffled by a simple sale and purchase agreement to being schooled up on things like due diligence, LIMs and builder’s reports.
It was a bit of a rocky road and Auckland’s property market at the time was a little hectic so we rushed things a bit, but we were lucky.
Of course we made quite a few mistakes – we were naive, in it alone and hindsight is a wondrous thing.
Location
It’s the one thing you can’t change so do lots of research and suss out the neighbourhood. We bought in West Auckland because that’s where we could afford but it would be a stretch to say we love it here.
We’ve dealt with the police about six times in four years. We’ve reported assaults at our neighbours’ houses, had property stolen and had a team of police in our backyard at 2am looking for a fugitive.
We were so desperate to buy that we didn’t look into the crime rate in our area that closely or chat to the neighbours.
But next time we buy, I’m going to study the area and make sure it’s where I’d like my kids to go to school and grow up.
Do your research but don’t procrastinate
We lost a few really awesome houses because we dragged our feet. The thought of such a massive loan was hard to digest, even after the bank gave us our approval, so we often took a step back when we should have been signing on the dotted line.
Think about what you want
Sounds simple enough. But think about what you really want and what you might want in five years’ time, too.
We bought a small, two-bedroom do-up thinking we could upgrade when the time was right but buying and selling a house costs a lot and every time you do that, you lose a bit to the real estate agents and bank.
Think about your future and don’t over commit but definitely also don’t under commit like we did.