Hi PropertyChat members, glad to join this community. I am at a stage with my partner that we are looking to buy our first house - we have boarded at my family home for 2 years and are now wanting our own place/space. While we are both FT students, we both work PT jobs, so would be limited to a budget of about $300-350k (with a strong preference to keep it under $300 where possible). My strongest consideration is land size when looking at houses, as we will likely be moving regionally in the next ~3-4 years due to studying agriculture then using it as an IP. Trying to find a reasonable building (happy with older houses that need some reno/updating) of minimum 500m2 and 2 bedrooms, and found the following suburbs (preferring east/south of river) provide that: High Wycombe, Forrestfield, Hamilton Hill, Spearwood, Koongamia, Greenmount, Belmont, Cloverdale, Lynwood, Ferndale, Langford, Thornlie. Wondering any tips regarding location and other key factors to look for when deciding on a home. Thanks in advance.
Do this first. If you are both students with only part time jobs, you may not have the capacity to get the loan, so finding out what/if you can borrow is the first step.
op, just to emphasise. Talk to an actual mortgage broker. Not the loan manager at a bank branch. Don't use a website where you punch in your pay. An independent broker, and tell them your exact situation. Two part time workers is not considered standard, and plans are meaningless if you can't fund them. The bank may have a different view of what you can afford to borrow.
Thanks all - I know that is the first step and am in the process of organising pre-approval through a mortgage broker right now, they are requiring lots of evidence of employment as I expected due to our work situation. However, we have saved over 40k cash for a deposit + 13k through FHSSS and I have another 36k in share market so hoping they will recognise our savings history!
I don't understand why land size is so important here - you said its because you might turn it into an IP? That doesn't necessarily follow for me?
I guess more along the lines of development later down the track, with a short term goal of living in the home, medium term of renting out for cashflow, and longer term of developing into duplex/triplex and selling off for capital gain. Land banking in a way I guess?
