Life is full of challenges from the time you’re born right through adulthood. One hurdle waiting to be jumped is having a family, something most people want, sooner or later. Many couples want to buy their own home before embarking on the journey through parenthood, and there’s no time like the present.
A Daunting Experience
First time home buyers face a range of obstacles before they can walk over the threshold of their new home. The process involves a number of different people and organizations, lots of scary looking paperwork and a harrowing financing process.
Just choosing a house – or building one from scratch, as the case may be – can take many weeks, especially when you need to choose and purchase a plot of land for building or decide on a particular area for house hunting.
Land Purchase
Planning to build a home? Finding and purchasing the land is one of the most challenging parts of the process. A reputable real estate agent can give you a hand and walk you through the purchase process.
Whether you’re buying land or a house that’s already standing, your purchase price will include not just the cost of the house, but also various fees such as closing lawyer’s charges, transfer taxes, insurance and more. Your financing agent should provide you with a good-faith estimate of the costs involved in closing the deal.
Designing a House
If you’re building and designing your own house from scratch, a reputable builder can help you select an architect-designed home that suits your needs. How long the process takes depends on many potential obstacles, such as government-required approvals, availability of materials, weather and the builder’s ability to find the requisite workers.
Building Your House
Fortunately, the traditional process of building a new home has been streamlined in recent decades. Home builders work closely with real estate agencies and financing companies to create a “one stop shop” for customers looking to build homes. This can make building a custom home less of an ordeal than it used to be.
First Home Owners Centre is one example of a company that understand the difficulties that first time buyers experience, and they have managed to bundle everything they need into one organization.
Saving for Your First Home
Make sure you have enough money saved to put toward a down payment and closing costs. You can painlessly save money on your everyday expenses to put toward buying a home, and also save loads of cash by not wasting money on your car expenses.
If you happen to live in Australia, you might qualify for government grants recently raised to $10,000 to help first time home buyers. Whatever the sacrifices you have to make to afford a new home, it’ll all be worth it when you walk into a home that’s all your own.
This post was underwritten by First Home Owners Centre; please read my disclosure here.
If you enjoyed this post, could you please like it on Facebook and give it a G+1?
Don’t miss all the latest tips, giveaways, reviews, deals and more. Subscribe to weekly email updates here!