After working in the real estate industry for close to a decade, I have been fortunate to help many people secure their dream home. While this is one of the main reasons I love my job, the unfortunate reality is that for every home I’ve helped someone purchase, there were families who missed out on the home.
To avoid this disappointment, I wanted to outline the top four mistakes I’ve noticed buyers make when looking to buy their dream home.
1. Waiting until you have found your dream home before placing your home on the market
It is important to be in a position to buy when you find the perfect home. If you are not in a position to cover the costs of two mortgages you run the risk of having to take out an expensive bridging loan until your current home is sold.
It may seem daunting to place your current home on the market with the unknown factor of where you are going to go when it is sold, but more often than not, this is the better option for most people. In many cases, when you have found a buyer for your current home, the perfect property will present itself. Then settlement can be arranged so that both transactions occur at the same time saving you time and money.
2. Procrastination and overshopping
Buying a new home is daunting! This is likely to be the biggest purchase of your life and there are a lot of factors to take into consideration. The inner perfectionist in us all wants to find the perfect home, at the perfect time, at the perfect price. Unfortunately as life dictates, there will be compromises to make in every situation. This often leads to buyers missing out on a home they love, because they are afraid that something even better will come up.
To avoid this, I recommend writing a list of characteristics you want in your home and dividing them into two categories; what you are prepared to compromise on and what you are not prepared to compromise on. This will help you when you find the right home and avoid you getting cold feet at the last minute.
3. Failing to secure finance
In my experience, failure to secure finance is the biggest mistake buyers make when looking to buy a property. Shopping around and obtaining finance takes time and many people are often disappointed to learn that they aren’t eligible for the amount of finance they thought they would be, or felt they needed. My best advice to you is to secure your finance early and maintain contact with your bank contact or broker to ensure that nothing has changed for your loan eligibility over the time taken to find your new home.
There are many good brokers around, if you don’t know one, call me and I’ll be happy to recommend someone I trust.
4. Failure to register your details with an agent
Many homes are listed silently with an agent, meaning they aren’t advertised online or marketed in any way. For these properties, you need to ensure that the agent knows you are looking for a property so that they can notify you when a property becomes listed this way.
As an agent, I have an extensive data base of clients looking to secure property all over Canberra. To be included in my data base and receive regular emails about upcoming properties please call or email me today.
