Why rent when you can own your dream home today?
Imagine being able to nail a hook into a wall without having to ask permission from your landlord.
The most memorable milestones of adult life are your first real job, your first true love, and your first home. When you look back on your young adult self decades from now, the decisions you make today will ensure your memories are fond and proud.
Very few of us will move straight out from living with our parents and into a home we’re buying. Renting is fine – for a while. For sure, the big share house is a rite of passage through which lifelong friendships are forged (and others flutter away forever!).
But renting has its drawbacks, too. Like when you get notice to vacate your rental property – despite being a model tenant – and moving out collides with your holiday plans. Again. Or being told, no, you can’t have a dog, even though the house is older than your grandparents and has a nice big fenced yard. Or just the drag of not being able to put your own stamp on the drab interiors without risking losing your bond.
It’s a big step, but the younger you are when you get into the property market, the earlier you start building equity in your home. Get the right loan and you might well find mortgage repayments are not much different to the amount of rent you were handing over to build someone else’s nest egg.
Budgeting is important if you want to become a homeowner. Financial advisers counsel young couples to ‘hate their mortgage’. It’s about having the discipline to forego a $5 latte and skip a couple of takeaways in favour of making coffee and cooking in your own kitchen, and resisting the shopping splurge you definitely don’t need, all in favour of chipping away at the home loan. It’s a strategy that sees changing some of your behaviours today paying off with a lot more financial freedom in a decade or two. Let’s face it, you’ve probably got into these smart spending habits while you’ve been steadily saving for your deposit!
Another great motivator is to give your dreams a physical presence. Start looking around in areas you’d like to live, making lists of things that are important to you in both the home and the community. Look to your future: if it includes kids, add schools to that list. Even if it seems like a distant notion, you’ll be surprised at how quickly their first day arrives. Check out the parks and sporting facilities to make sure you can do the things you love without a horrendous commute. That goes for work, too, of course.
You can read more about transitioning from a renter to a first home buyer here, and how the process of buying your first home doesn't have to be daunting!
Stockland Orion has completed and off the plan townhomes to suit every sized dream, and the community to bring them to life, Enquire now.
