‘I just want a place I can call my own’.

It’s the most common thing I hear from aspiring First Home Buyers.

I get it.

Article 2/6 in our First Home Foundations Series.

The future in a rental is unknown and unstable. Rents can go up at anytime, or worse, you can be evicted at a moment’s notice. What First Home Buyers crave is the stability and community that comes from being a part of a neighbourhood where you are able to form long-lasting relationships.

If you want to be able to create this, you must ensure your goals are realistic and affordable.

As a First Home Buyer, your number one goal is to get your foot in the door.

There’s a reason it seems like it’s getting harder to get into the property market – it’s because it is.

The median house price in 1982 was $55,100 and your average block size was over 1000m².

The median house price in 2023 is $773,509 and the average block size is 350m².

In my lifetime, property prices have gone up 14-fold for a block which is 1/3 the size. That’s a 52-fold increase for a comparable piece of land!

The property market is like an escalator, slowly but steadily heading up and getting further and further out of reach.

We are quite literally in a race against time and need to get into the market while we still can.

This is why affordability is so important. If your dreams aren’t affordable, they are never going to materialise.

What I suggest to aspiring First Home Buyers is to:

1. get yourself finance ready (see the next article in this series);
2. find a broker who is committed to getting you into a home;
3. get a purchase capacity done; and
4. get a list of locations that are within your budget.

The biggest mistake aspiring First Home Buyers make at this point is to wait, thinking that they will somehow be able to save more, earn more, or inherit more and get themselves into a home which is currently unaffordable. To see why this is the biggest mistake you’ll ever make, check here.

Invariably this thinking ends up in one of 2 places:

1. Paying more money for a smaller block which is further away or
2. Being priced out of the market completely

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. If you have the capacity to get into a home now, you absolutely should as you don’t know what you will be able to do in the future.

Affordability is the key.