First Time Home Buyer Advice
The process of buying your first home can bring about many unexpected challenges and stresses. Trust Astute Brisbane Central’s first time home buyer advice to take the guess work out of the process and have you in your first home sooner.
Your first big investment begins here
Taking those first steps to buying your first home can be exciting and daunting all at once. But at Astute you have a friend in finance. We will work with you to meet your financial goals, no matter how long it takes. From understanding the costs of purchasing, saving for a deposit and making repayments, we’ll make sure you have all the information you need to be financially Astute.
We can help you realise
- How much you can borrow
- How much you will need for a deposit
- If you can purchase now or in the future
- What to expect in repayments, fees and insurance
- If you’re eligible for any grants or benefits
At Astute, we are focused on making financial decisions seem simple, by removing the jargon and teaching you about our world of finance.
Some common loan features include:
- Allowing additional repayments to be made
- Access to o– set accounts to reduce interest
- Access to redraw facility
- Ability to take repayment holidays
- The flexibility to move from a variable to fixed rate loan
Our experienced team of mortgage brokers can help you identify the features of a loan you need to best meet your goals.
Essential First Time Home Buyer Advice
As a rough guide, aim to save 20% of the purchase price, plus enough to cover costs. If you borrow more than 80% of the purchase price, you may have to pay lenders' mortgage insurance (LMI). This is an insurance that protects the credit provider from the borrower(s) not being able to repay the loan.
It important from the start to only borrow what you need and can afford. Careful budgeting is needed in the early stages of the first time buyer mortgage application process so that a projection can be made to determine your spending requirements moving into the future.
The Queensland First Home Owners’ Grant is a state government initiative to help when buying your first home. You can buy off the plan or choose to build yourself. If you or your spouse has never owned a home before you may be entitled to a concession up to 20,000 to buy your new home.
A crucial element of good first time home buyer advice is ensuring you have a complete understanding of interest rates and which type of rate will be most suitable. The charges imposed on you for borrowing money will differ substantially depending on if you apply for a fixed or variable loan interest rate.
A variable rate goes up and down at the lender's discretion so there is never any certainty. However this can be an attractive option when buying your first home because you have the ability to make extra repayments to pay it off quicker.
A fixed rate is a locked interest rate where you can keep it constant for a period up to 5 years. The benefits of this are you know exactly what you are going to be paying in that period. However, you don't have the chance to benefit from falling interest rates and you may not be able to pay extra into your home loan.
For those looking at buying your first home, mum and dad play a crucial role in gathering funds to pay for their deposit. It's important to differentiate between gifting money and being a guarantor.
Gifting - Parents are able to give any sum to their children to contribute to the loan. It must be a gift not a loan with interest charged.
Guarantor - a parent becomes a guarantor to the loan and becomes a co-borrower. If their child defaults on the loan, the lender could ask them to take over the repayments.
Buying a home seem all too confusing?
That's where we can help...
Astute Brisbane Central is your trusted financial advising firm that is dedicated to providing tailored first time home buyer advice. Get in touch with our friendly team to start this exciting journey today.
Let Astute Guide You
Utilising an Astute Brisbane Central mortgage broker alleviates the need for you to stress over finding and comparing mortgage offers from different banks. We leave no stone unturned when comparing first time buyer mortgage options, to present you only the best mortgage options available.
Preparing a Budget
As your mortgage broker, we make sure you don't overexert yourself by taking on too much debt. Our team work with you by going over your bank statements with a fine tooth comb ensuring every expense is accounted for before tailoring your affordability assessment and setting up a strategy to help you achieve your financial goals.
Assessing Government Incentives
As a first home buyer, you have access to a government incentives to build your first home. We guide you through the process of applying for the First home buyer grant to make sure you get the helping hand you need.
Saving For a Deposit
We believe the hardest part of buying your first home is saving a deposit. Due to our full financial services model, you have access to our financial advisers that can assist with goals based budgeting to increase the value of your initial deposit. If you can't wait and save, a close family member may be able to act as guarantor for your home loan. By using the equity in their property as security for your home, your guarantor can help you close the gap between your savings and the deposit you need.
Completing Mortgage Applications
We are you face to face source of comparing all the lenders in the market to make sure your current situation aligns with the banks lending policies. We have access to over 40 lenders, and the eventual provider of your first time buyer mortgage is often not the institution you do your everyday banking with. Once we have found the right deal for you, all the paperwork is done by us. This is because we know our clients’ financial world in and out we can provide all this information to the bank without having to bother you for information.
Complete Guidance
Unlike other brokers, we liaise with your legal representative to make sure the transition from prepurchase to settlement is as seamless as possible.
Lastly, if you’re not ready to buy, we can complete the application process without submitting the loan. We can do a pre approval on your current situation to determine where you stand in purchasing your first home, and if you’re not ready we can work to help you get there.
Success Stories
First Home Buyer
I remember Steve and Eunice were introduced to me by Eunice’s Parents, Frank & Anna, I had been looking after the Family’s finances for many years and now it was time for Eunice and her husband Steve to purchase their first home.
Buying your first home is a major step and can be quite daunting, and like all First Home Buyers Steve and Eunice were excited but had no idea where to start, what were the costs, how much deposit do they need, how much can they borrow, do they need a solicitor or a building and pest inspector, should they have a fixed or variable interest rate, or both and many other questions.
We arranged a time to meet face to face were I explained to Steve and Eunice, like I do with all clients, that we are here to hold their hand through every step of the journey and to support them in any way we can. We then went through every aspect of what they were about to encounter and that we want to make it a simple, easy, and supportive process.
We do this by encouraging clients to ask as many questions as possible. I say to my clients, when it comes to applying for a first time buyer mortgage there is no such thing as a stupid question. I want to make sure they understand every aspect of the process, the loan itself, protecting themselves and by also introducing them to professionals that we have established relationships with. Our financial planning team will assist with protecting them now that they have a home loan in case anything does go wrong. Our general insurance team make sure when they do sign a contract they have the property and their possessions protected as quickly as possible. Solicitors will assist with the conveyancing, which is very important to get right. And finally, building and pest inspectors who will inspect the property they are purchasing to identify any issues.
We then identified the type of loan facility that would best suit their needs by establishing what their current circumstances are and what plans and goals they have for the future. There is no point setting up a loan without considering what the client wants to achieve next.
The next step was to arrange a pre-approval. This is very important, especially for first home buyers as it provided Steve and Eunice with the confidence to go to the market knowing what their maximum purchase price was. It also provides better negotiating power with any potential sellers as they are already pre-approved thanks to our first time home buyer advice.
As part of the processs, I also provided Steve and Eunice with helpful tips in dealing with Real Estate agents and what information they would need to provide when making an offer. Steve and Eunice let me know they found this invaluable.
Steve and Eunice within a short time had found their dream home. We put them in touch with a solicitor who assisted with the conveyancing, they engaged the building and pest inspector we had referred them to, and they also arranged their insurance through our general insurance team.
The feedback from Steve and Eunice was that they were extremely happy with everyone that we had introduced them to. However, the most important things they conveyed was not only the meaningful first time home buyer advice we provided, but that having us assist in this allowed them to feel they had people they could trust around them.
As we already had the pre-approval in place it was also a much simpler process to get their loan unconditionally approved. The bank then arranged the loan documents to be issued which can be difficult and confusing at times. So we arranged a time to sit down and go through these with Steve and Eunice to make sure they understood what they were signing. We were also able to witness the mortgage documents, reducing the need for them to find their own Justice of the Peace.
Just three short weeks after they found their dream home they were moving in and we couldn’t have been happier for them.
We know it's difficult to get started - that's why we offer a no obligation discovery chat. For complete financial advice from a skilled financial advisor, get in touch with us today.
Astute Brisbane Central are the leading suppliers of lifetime financial advice and would be thrilled to provide first time home buyer advice to get you into your first home sooner.