Episode Outline
Show Notes
Renee Young is a first-time home buyer. After years of saving and research, she bought her first home in 2021 in Brisbane, QLD.
In this episode, Renee takes us through her journey to home ownership, including her struggle to be taken seriously by selling agents as a single young person. She shares how she managed her expectations and compromised to buy a property within her means. She also highlights the importance of ensuring you have the time, money, and energy for renovations and researching your contractors so you don’t have to redo your brand-new bathroom six months later.
Speaker:
Renee Young (Senior Consultant)
Transcript
Michael 0:00
The information contained in this podcast is general in nature and is not to be taken as financial or personal advice.
Michael 0:06
It does not consider your objectives, financial situation or needs.
Michael 0:10
You should consider whether this information is suitable for you and your personal circumstances before acting on it.
Michael 0:17
Hi and welcome to the home, run your guide to buying your first home in Australia on the show, I’ll walk you through the home-buying process from every angle.
Michael 0:24
We cover steps to take the pitfalls to avoid and the answers to all your questions you’ve been dying to ask no matter what stage you’re at, you’ll learn everything you need to know about buying your first home.
Michael 0:35
I’m your host, Michael Nasser and I’m a mortgage broker at Lendstreet.
Michael 0:39
And I really love helping people buy their first home.
Michael 0:46
Every property journey is unique and we’re once again talking to somebody who was recently in your position and has now bought their first home.
Michael 0:54
Today, we’re chatting with Renee, Young Renee bought her first property by herself in 2021.
Michael 1:00
After years of researching and saving in this episode, Renee will share her journey to home ownership why she bought a property that needed renovations, and what the process felt like she’ll open up about the importance of doing your research and how it could save you from having to renovate your bathroom twice.
Michael 1:16
Let’s jump in, Renee.
Michael 1:21
Welcome to the show.
Renee 1:22
Thank you so much for having me.
Michael 1:24
I’m super excited about this conversation today because unlike our other conversations that we have, we are speaking to somebody who’s recently purchased their first home.
Michael 1:32
So you’ve been through the journey and you have experienced it now from the other side, having done it and, and so to be able to pick your brain, I think is a real advantage for us and to be able to share that with people that are in the situation that you were in some time ago when you started to make that decision to buy a house is gonna be super beneficial.
Michael 1:47
So le congratulations first and foremost on purchasing your own home and let’s set the scene.
Michael 1:52
Where did you buy?
Michael 1:53
And when did you buy?
Renee 1:54
Yeah.
Renee 1:55
So I bought on the south side of Brisbane in November 2021.
Renee 2:00
So we, no, yeah, 2021 we just hit, you just hit two years on the loan and it’s great.
Michael 2:06
I like how you say you hit two years on the loan.
Michael 2:08
So obviously the loan is a is an important part of the process.
Michael 2:12
So I’m sure we’re gonna be touching on that as we get going.
Michael 2:14
But yeah, it’s it’s that you bench that and what kind of property is it?
Michael 2:18
Can you tell us a bit more about the property?
Renee 2:20
It’s a two bedroom townhouse upstairs downstairs.
Michael 2:24
Ok.
Michael 2:24
So obviously when it came to considering the asset type, you opted for a townhouse, was that a strategic thing or is that something you had from the outset or, or how did you get to that particular point of buying the townhouse?
Michael 2:36
And what sort of considerations have come into play with it being in a complex.
Renee 2:40
So I was actively avoiding trying to get a, a body corporate at all.
Renee 2:45
I was really not one to do any body corporate fees, but unfortunately, due to the market when I was buying, it was just before that COVID peak.
Renee 2:56
So everyone had moved to Queensland from interstate and they were then basically like swarming the market every house there was and I looked at a bunch of houses, I put offers in on a bunch of them, but I just couldn’t be competitive.
Renee 3:11
So I decided to then switch focus to a townhouse rather than a unit purely because I wanted to have a bit more space that you get in the townhouse with a little courtyard versus having a balcony.
Renee 3:25
And I went for something that had a really, really low body corporate rate overall.
Renee 3:30
So I didn’t wanna have like any pools or electric fences or gates or anything that can really rise those big fees.
Renee 3:38
And if you have elevators, I was like, no, because they are the first things that break in any shared complex.
Renee 3:44
So that’s where I was limited to where I was looking at buying to.
Michael 3:48
And is it an investment property or do you live in it?
Renee 3:50
I live in it.
Michael 3:52
Ok.
Michael 3:52
And that was always the intention from the outset.
Renee 3:54
Yeah, it was always the intention to buy and live in for at least five years.
Renee 3:59
Just so I had enough time to actually get my finances in order to buy the dream home, so to speak.
Michael 4:07
All right.
Michael 4:07
And we’ll unpack that a little bit more as I guess we get going and it’s a good set of context there.
Michael 4:11
So people now know what you bought when you bought and a few of those considerations that you had.
Michael 4:15
But if we rewind back now to the journey, tell us the journey about buying your home, I guess.
Michael 4:21
Where did the idea form?
Michael 4:22
And how did you get to that point?
Michael 4:24
You know, I guess, and what were those steps along the way?
Renee 4:26
Yeah.
Renee 4:26
So everyone who knows me knows that I have wanted a house since basically 18, I was working towards having a house savings, since I got a full time job and then life got in the way throughout my early twenties and I finally had the opportunity to start saving at 27.
Renee 4:46
So that’s when I decided to save that year.
Renee 4:49
I was very fortunate to live with my parents at the time.
Renee 4:55
So I ended up being able to save that money quite not easily.
Renee 4:59
It was still obviously a lot of struggles but like less stressful than when I was paying rent for, you know, years on end.
Renee 5:07
So I was able to get into the market somewhat quicker than I was hoping.
Renee 5:12
My original goal was to get there by 30 I got there by 28.
Michael 5:15
Yeah.
Michael 5:15
And you started saving at 27.
Michael 5:17
So effectively, once you sort of put your mind to it, it was one year when it came to knowing how much to save.
Michael 5:22
How did you work that out or were you just saving as much as you could?
Renee 5:26
Yeah.
Renee 5:26
So I love numbers.
Renee 5:28
Numbers are my favorite thing ever.
Renee 5:29
So I basically math out how much I wanted to have as like a minimum.
Renee 5:35
And then what I’d like to have as a maximum as like an ideal.
Renee 5:38
Once I had almost all of my minimum amount saved, I then commenced the broker chat and that sort of thing.
Renee 5:47
But my whole thought process was I wanted to try and avoid paying LMI.
Renee 5:53
So I wanted to sort of look at my purchase price was and what my deposit needed to be to avoid that LMI.
Renee 6:00
Which I ended up paying 2% LMI on my property, which is nothing.
Renee 6:06
It was like $2000.
Renee 6:08
It was, it was ridiculously low.
Renee 6:10
But that’s, I basically just made sure I had enough capital to afford furniture renovations, the property, any fees, all those little things.
Renee 6:21
So I wasn’t having to get bill stress.
Michael 6:28
And you do all that before engaging with a broker.
Renee 6:28
Yeah.
Michael 6:29
Well, that’s great.
Michael 6:29
I mean, a lot of times you tend to find people will start that journey at the beginning and get all of that mapped out.
Michael 6:34
But yeah, we had the foresight and, and I guess there was a bit of research there from your end terms of figuring that out.
Michael 6:39
And you purchased an existing property.
Michael 6:40
Is that correct?
Renee 6:41
I did purchase and buy a property that was existing.
Renee 6:44
Yes, it was built in the late eighties.
Michael 6:47
Ok.
Michael 6:48
And was there ever a consideration in terms of not buying pre-existing or was that something that you were adamant about?
Renee 6:54
I wanted to buy new originally, like when I was, you know, younger and you could get a house and land package where I was looking for 2 6300 that was always the goal, have my own brand new home.
Renee 7:08
And then as we all know over the years, it’s what 10 years new house builds have gone from affordable quick turnarounds to being $500,000 for a really small block in a cookie cutter community where you can’t have anything different on the outside.
Renee 7:26
So it wasn’t really feasible like I, I could have had the money if I wanted to, but I decided to not live to pay a mortgage and went for a pre-existing property that was in the price range that had my lifestyle in mine still.
Michael 7:40
And I guess so from what I’m hearing to this point is that you’ve made compromises along the way, obviously, you’ve had a bit of a vision and a thought process from the beginning, whether it be having your own house or a townhouse or buying those fees and all that sort of stuff.
Michael 7:51
But along the journey, you’ve had to pivot, you’ve had to modify, you’ve had to adjust, obviously, with that end goal in mind.
Michael 7:57
So, that’s pretty indicative, I think of what most people experience in this particular journey.
Michael 8:01
So it’s good to hear that that’s what you also experienced.
Michael 8:04
You mentioned earlier that you obviously did you research when it came to figuring out how much to save you obviously were aware of LMI before engaging a broker.
Michael 8:10
So you’ve done some reading, you, you’re aware of the concept for those that don’t know, it’s lenders mortgage insurance, obviously, which is payable when you have less than a 20% deposit on a property and you’d work that all out and you had to pay a little bit of LMI, but nothing too significant.
Michael 8:23
That was going to be detrimental to you, I guess moving forward other than the finance side of things.
Michael 8:28
And the deposit-saving side of things.
Michael 8:30
What other kind of research did you do?
Renee 8:32
I knew that I was buying an older property so I knew that I was going to have to go and do renovations of some kind.
Renee 8:40
I went to over 30 open houses and I saw the quality of the finishes in these places and I like things that look nice and these were not nice kitchens.
Renee 8:51
They were like 30-year-old bathrooms.
Renee 8:54
So I knew from the get-go, I’d have to research what it would cost to do a kitchen, do a bathroom, do flooring, do the renovation things that you don’t think of like a stairway.
Renee 9:05
I never ever thought of what a stairway would cost to renovate.
Renee 9:10
All lights, lights are weirdly expensive, and solar fans did not know that until I started researching it.
Renee 9:15
And that was another thing.
Renee 9:17
So I was like, I need to have the house deposit, but also cash to renovate the things.
Renee 9:24
So when I get the place, I’m not having to live in a property makes me uncomfortable when I’ve just put my life savings on it.
Michael 9:31
And so you, you would count for that in savings.
Michael 9:33
So you make sure you had the deposit saved and the savings required.
Michael 9:35
And so you went out and you basically spoke to different suppliers and got an idea as to what things are gonna cost as to what you like.
Michael 9:41
And then, and that as a budget as well that you’re saving for.
Renee 9:44
Yeah, so I ended up saving I think $30,000 additional in renovation money because I didn’t want to have any extra home loan stuff at the time I just wanted to have the home as a whole.
Michael 9:51
And I definitely want to dive into those renovation conversation a little bit further as well.
Michael 9:57
But before I do that, was this house your first choice?
Michael 10:00
Like was it the first house that you put an offer on?
Michael 10:02
Or how many did you didn’t see?
Michael 10:04
Did you put offers on?
Michael 10:05
and how long did it take you to find the actual property that was right for you?
Renee 10:08
So this house was not my first choice.
Renee 10:11
It wasn’t even my fourth or fifth choice, my best friend and I did a little road trip.
Renee 10:18
I had the Realestate.com app on my phone with all the they want to see on a Saturday.
Renee 10:24
And we did like, I think 12 or 13 houses and properties on that one day, I think in total, I viewed like 40 houses and townhouses across the south to west of Brisbane.
Renee 10:38
And I realised very quickly where I wasn’t going to buy and where I couldn’t buy, I put offers in on four properties.
Renee 10:49
I have a horror story about the first one that I fell in love with.
Renee 10:54
As you always do, you always find that first place?
Renee 10:57
And this is the one that I want this is my dream.
Renee 11:00
You fall in love with it for it.
Renee 11:02
It’s even yours and then you’re heartbroken when the agent is not as clear as you would hope with their sales techniques.
Michael 11:11
Is it OK to expand on that?
Michael 11:13
Like, can you tell us about that story?
Michael 11:14
Because that sounds quite interesting and, and, and I guess there are some lessons out of that too that other people that are listening can get out of it.
Michael 11:19
So yeah, let’s get into that one.
Renee 11:20
So I’ve had this agent, he it was a it was an actual house in a six complex with nobody corporate for 280k which was like middle of price range looking at and it was perfect.
Renee 11:34
It had a fireplace, three bedrooms, a little backyard.
Renee 11:36
It was all secured for my dog.
Renee 11:38
I loved it from the get-go.
Renee 11:40
I it was listed within three days.
Renee 11:42
I had inquired on it and asked to go view it that Saturday that Saturday comes around.
Renee 11:49
No one else has viewed the property yet.
Renee 11:51
Cos I was the first person there to view it and the agent goes to me.
Renee 11:55
We have an offer already on the table.
Renee 11:57
We are taking offers for second offers and second bids on the property.
Renee 12:03
And I was like, what do you mean a bid on the property?
Renee 12:06
Which he basically, he was pitting us against other and people that had obviously the other offer had offered more than I was willing to pay for it.
Renee 12:16
And I did go above the asking price on it.
Renee 12:19
I actually went a bit trigger-happy on the price if I’m being honest.
Renee 12:23
And that’s it.
Renee 12:24
I was never called by him again and I then learned that’s apparently illegal.
Renee 12:28
Yeah.
Renee 12:28
Apparently, I don’t know if that’s actually true.
Renee 12:30
I, again, this is years ago.
Michael 12:32
Oh, yeah.
Michael 12:33
Absolutely.
Michael 12:33
Yeah.
Michael 12:34
And I guess he didn’t act in a manner that was, I guess professional, which you can probably, you probably would have seen professional at work and perhaps people that were less professional.
Michael 12:42
So, how did you manage that?
Michael 12:44
Was that something you could pick up straight away or did you change the way you approached agents after that?
Renee 12:48
Yeah, I really struggled with being accepted and taken seriously by agents because I was younger, single, no man or partner on my shoulder.
Renee 12:58
I did get that discrimination, so to speak from agents who thought that I was less than people that came in with the picture.
Renee 13:07
Perfect standard house nuclear family sort of thing.
Renee 13:11
So I did struggle with getting their actual attention when I was pre-approved when I had the money when I had everything needed.
Renee 13:21
They still didn’t take me seriously.
Renee 13:23
My favorite instance with inspections and with agents was this place in Acacia Ridge.
Renee 13:29
It was horrible.
Renee 13:31
It was a derelict house.
Renee 13:33
I hated it.
Renee 13:33
But the agent when I walked in, I had a mom with me who’s, you know, in her fifties, who’s more the person that would be buying a property.
Renee 13:42
Apparently.
Renee 13:42
And the lady didn’t even like, talk to me.
Renee 13:45
She talked straight to my mother and my mom was like, actually my daughter’s the one buying this property you appreciate and talk to her.
Renee 13:54
And then the agent then looked at me and basically just, they still ripped me off like they just, they just didn’t take me seriously.
Renee 14:03
So out of all the agents I dealt with tens of agents that I’ve dealt with.
Renee 14:09
I only heard about four actually into looked past the young blonde.
Michael 14:15
The profile basically about that, you know.
Renee 14:17
Yeah, I ended up dressing down a lot for the inspections.
Renee 14:21
I’ve been in sales for 13 14 years and, you know, I’ve always presented myself a certain way.
Renee 14:29
I didn’t carry the designer handbag with me.
Renee 14:32
I didn’t wear any brand names.
Renee 14:34
I just wore jeans or like leggings and a shirt because I was sick of them looking at me and going.
Renee 14:41
Hmmm.
Renee 14:42
No.
Renee 14:43
And it’s sort of that feeling where you’re like, what’s the point?
Renee 14:46
The one I ended up buying was the agent actually was nice to me and did follow up with me and did make the times the agent that I bought off.
Renee 14:57
He like, I viewed the property once with my best friend and then the week after with my parents, my best friend saw potential in it, but it was like, this is rough potential.
Renee 15:09
My parents were like, maybe and then we, he called me back a few weeks later.
Renee 15:14
I hadn’t been sold yet, which in COVID times was impossible.
Renee 15:18
They sold within two weeks of being listed.
Renee 15:21
So he called me and was like, are you keen?
Renee 15:24
And I’m like, oh, look, I don’t love the place.
Renee 15:27
Like I, I don’t love it.
Renee 15:28
You know, it needs a lot of work.
Renee 15:29
You’re asking too much money for what it needs.
Renee 15:33
And I just, I’m not going to pay what you’re asking.
Renee 15:36
It’s, it needs $50,000 in renovations.
Renee 15:39
It’s just not feasible.
Renee 15:41
And when I crunched the numbers to him with what it would cost to remove everything.
Renee 15:46
Get new flooring in, get new kitchen, bathroom, paint the walls, every single wall in the house had been repaired and had really dodgy hole marks on it.
Renee 15:55
So it was like you have to then go in and repair it all.
Renee 15:58
And I’m like, it’s just not feasible for me to then spend this extra money that you’ve added onto the house when they’ve had the house for seven years and never done anything with it.
Renee 16:08
So I’m like, I will pay what you guys paid for it plus a few $1000.07 years ago because you’ve done nothing to this property.
Renee 16:15
You’ve let it get even more dilapidated.
Renee 16:17
It’s just not worth it financially.
Renee 16:19
So I did a really lowball offer and went from there,
Michael 16:25
And that was the property that you ended up purchasing.
Renee 16:26
Yeah, my dad was really mad that I bought it without showing him.
Renee 16:30
He was over, like interstate couldn’t get into Queensland because the borders were closed and I sent him photos.
Renee 16:36
He hated it and was like, dad, what a house he’s like, oh, what I’m like, yeah, I bought this one and we call it, it has a name that we call it, but I’ll just call it the den because it was very derelict.
Renee 16:48
It was right.
Renee 16:48
Not good.
Michael 16:49
Well, you obviously saw some potential in it and obviously that also enabled you to buy it probably at a price that was a little bit less than what a house that was at a reasonable level at that particular point in time would have been obviously the renovations played a pretty critical part there and it probably added value, which is a pretty good thing to be doing when you’re purchasing a property.
Michael 17:07
And some people will see that as a negative and other people see that as a positive.
Michael 17:11
Some people want to walk in there and just have the house, but they’re buying it for top dollar.
Michael 17:15
But if you have the ability and the foresight to sort of say, well, this can be what I want it to be.
Michael 17:19
It’s not like that now, but because of that, I can get it a little bit cheaper, invest in it.
Michael 17:23
But then I’m gonna add some more value to it too.
Michael 17:25
And I would imagine if someone comes through your house now, it’s a totally different proposition to what you walked in with it.
Michael 17:30
So, those renovations, what kind of work did it involve?
Michael 17:34
Like, what did you actually do?
Renee 17:37
Everything. So you walk into the place and there was the rental carpet on the floor, that blue rental carpet.
Renee 17:44
Everyone knows it.
Renee 17:45
Everyone’s seen it.
Renee 17:46
It had the eighties red wood trimmed staircases, window sills everything.
Renee 17:53
Every single trim in the house was that gross, orange brown wood trim which I grew up with.
Renee 18:01
And when I was a kid, not an issue in 2021, ugly.
Renee 18:05
So it had that the bathroom had a water leak.
Renee 18:08
It had the old quarter bathtub in there for the shower.
Renee 18:12
It was literally like a step back in time.
Renee 18:14
It had Lino on the floor of the bathroom and then ripped that up and it had the little red tiles that they had when I was a kid on the bathroom floor.
Renee 18:24
So like it had not been touched since 86.
Renee 18:27
They just had patched things up with it to keep it working.
Renee 18:29
Basically, the kitchen was horrible.
Renee 18:32
So I walked in and was like, ok, cool.
Renee 18:34
First thing I’m going to do is get a skip bin.
Renee 18:36
So I then had to call around Brisbane, find a skip bin.
Renee 18:39
I got like a three by three for I think like 300 bucks for a weekend.
Renee 18:44
And I did a working bee.
Renee 18:45
I put a call on Facebook.
Renee 18:47
I was like, if anyone needs to get their frustrations out, bring a hammer, come to my house, rip some stuff out with me.
Renee 18:55
And I ended up having one of my old work colleagues and my parents come over.
Renee 19:00
So my mom and stepdad and we started in the living room, ripped all the carpet, all the lining up.
Renee 19:07
My mum started upstairs ripping the carpet up, we then ripped out all the doors.
Renee 19:11
Everything the house was a shell.
Renee 19:14
By the time we finished, there was nothing fixed anywhere in the house.
Michael 19:18
So you basically gutted it and read everything into the inside.
Michael 19:21
Well, so it was, it’s big duty like you did a lot of work.
Michael 19:24
How did you manage that renovation stage?
Michael 19:26
So you did it all yourself.
Michael 19:26
You didn’t have anyone assist, I guess in that regard and you just found the trades, respective trades, got quotes and I guess got things done.
Renee 19:33
Yeah.
Renee 19:33
So I had friends and family help me a lot.
Renee 19:35
My dad when he came back into the state after lockdown limits were removed.
Renee 19:40
He did almost all of the like big things.
Renee 19:43
So painting all the floor stuff.
Renee 19:45
I had to get trades for the floor installation for the final flooring or the clip clack flooring downstairs and the carpet upstairs.
Renee 19:55
I had no kitchen for seven months.
Renee 19:57
So I didn’t have a sink for seven months in my kitchen.
Renee 20:01
I used the laundry sink the whole time, which I didn’t.
Renee 20:06
That’s the one thing I kept in the house.
Renee 20:07
So I had a trady for the bathroom.
Renee 20:11
That’s the only actual trade I used for the whole house was the bathroom because my said he could not do.
Michael 20:19
Yeah.
Michael 20:19
And I guess you’re pretty fortunate in the fact that you didn’t need to outlay as much cost as you otherwise would have if you had to engage trades across the board.
Michael 20:26
So that made it possible, I imagine.
Renee 20:28
Yeah, I’m really fortunate.
Renee 20:30
And I’ve also grown up with, you know, a lot of handiwork and stuff.
Renee 20:33
So I sort of knew the basics on how to remove, you know, like light switch covers so you don’t destroy them when you’re painting.
Renee 20:40
Like all those little things I sort of knew from my childhood, like how to do basic painting.
Renee 20:46
But like, you know, the things that you don’t know about, like how to rip up something like the carpet, nail, track things without ruining the floorboards, like how to secure floorboards back to the subfloor.
Renee 20:59
Like little things like that.
Renee 21:00
I learned just from trial and error.
Renee 21:03
I learned how to do typing and grouting for flashbacks.
Renee 21:08
It’s like a fun little diy project.
Michael 21:09
Well, that’s it.
Michael 21:10
It sounds like you took it as an opportunity to learn.
Michael 21:12
And I guess on that, what advice would you have for any other first?
Michael 21:15
Time buyers who are looking at a property that needs renovation.
Renee 21:23
I think with renovations, it really comes down to what you can handle. Like, don’t bite off something that, you know, it needs a whole renovation hole, everything done if you don’t know what that actually entails, if you walk in somewhere and you go ok, cool.
Renee 21:37
The kitchen needs replacing.
Renee 21:38
It’s not just going to bunnings and buying a kitchen.
Renee 21:41
It’s having to have everything measured meticulously.
Renee 21:44
Like it’s having to know that detail behind it that you don’t really get taught unless you’ve got experience in the industry.
Renee 21:52
Like I’ve worked Harvey Norman and Good Guys for seven years.
Renee 21:55
So I knew the basics of kitchen stuff and what brands to buy and everything.
Renee 22:00
But I think if you’re looking into like renovating, don’t do what I did do, not do a whole house at once unless you’ve got the money for the trades and have backup money because I actually burned through all of my cash that I had saved up very quickly.
Renee 22:17
And my bathroom broke down.
Renee 22:18
Six months later, I had to both make bank your dad to pay for my cracked floor, my bathroom.
Renee 22:25
So when you’re doing renovations really, really investigate the tradies you’re putting on to your work.
Renee 22:32
I didn’t look into my tradie.
Michael 22:35
That was the one that you mentioned you did get right.
Michael 22:36
It was for the bathroom.
Renee 22:38
Yeah, the one, the one trade I actually, it’s like the floor guys, they were awesome brand because you are not getting paid for it, but like brand but with big so like sparky plumbers, you know, actual builders look into what they actually do, what they outsource.
Renee 22:59
So, like my guy, he did the building.
Renee 23:02
Yeah, sweet.
Renee 23:03
But I did the plumbing, which is fantastic, but he didn’t do the tiling.
Renee 23:07
So he had to then get someone else to do the tiling and then, yeah, and then when they’re getting these quotes done, make sure everything’s itemised.
Renee 23:16
So there’s nothing.
Renee 23:18
So like I’ve got a stand-alone shower screen, like the, you know, the new minimalistic style shower screen that was included on the quote.
Renee 23:27
I have to then, you know, halfway through, find another $1000 for it.
Renee 23:31
Don’t let them tell you what would work best for the space, have an idea and research what you like as a person don’t go for trends.
Renee 23:42
I know that everyone wants to have, you know, these funky kitchens and bathrooms.
Renee 23:47
But if anything breaks down with the tiles that you’ve chosen, they’re very hard to get tiles again.
Renee 23:54
Like I’m lucky that when my subfloor, my bathroom cracked my tiles were still in fashion because they were just normal tiles.
Renee 24:03
They weren’t detailed, I was gonna get little detailed pretty tiles.
Renee 24:07
Thankfully, I didn’t because if that happens, you can’t easily replace things.
Renee 24:12
So I think it’s all about research and make sure that they’re registered.
Renee 24:16
You’ve got licenses that they’re qualified.
Renee 24:19
They’ve got the trade requirements for your state because the last thing you want to do is have to go in, at least in Queensland to CCAT to report and try and get your money back.
Renee 24:31
I didn’t go that route.
Renee 24:32
That was an issue for me.
Michael But it’s definitely something to check out.
Michael 24:35
Yeah.
Michael 24:35
And that’s a good point, especially when it comes to around.
Michael 24:37
It is to make sure your builders are all certified and it probably comes down to insurance too to make sure that if anything goes wrong on the job that they, you know, they’re adequately insured as well to, you know, for whatever may occur.
Michael 24:46
So I think there’s some great tips there and there’s a whole array of them across the board.
Michael 24:51
But those ones in for renovations in particular, I think there’s a heap there that, that I think our listeners will get a lot of value out of.
Michael 24:56
We’re pretty close to up.
Michael 24:57
And I guess we ask two questions generally as we do, the first one that we’d ask is, what would your number one tip for first home buyers be that are trying to get into the market now?
Renee 25:09
Say as much as you can, but live within your lifestyle still.
Renee 25:11
So look at what you can comfortably live on, but do it less.
Renee 25:16
So for me, it was not going out as often, not buying clothes for every single event like I would have previously done and if possible and you can like, look at living somewhere that’s, you know, at a lower rate for rent.
Renee 25:32
I know it’s very hard now with rentals.
Renee 25:35
Like I, I’m very thankful and very fortunate, but I think your biggest thing is just trying to cut down on that spending as much as you can.
Michael 25:45
And you mentioned, you know, I think what you mentioned to me, I took it as delayed gratification.
Michael 25:49
You basically sort of have to, which is hard, I think now with the way we currently live, it’s like we want everything, you know, now, like we get bored very quickly and our attention span is doesn’t last long and whether it’s Flicking through Netflix or whether it’s through Instagram or whatever it may be, it’s like we get that hit straight away.
Michael 26:05
And so to then say, well, hold on.
Michael 26:06
Now you’ve got to not do stuff, don’t buy what you wanna buy.
Michael 26:10
But I guess if I ask you now, looking back on it, are you glad that you did it?
Renee 26:15
I am really glad that I did it because it’s something that like I can, I own it, you know, and we, we did mention briefly about, you know, increase in the property value.
Renee 26:28
I have seen a very dramatic increase in two years on the property and that’s just based on the value on renovation side.
Renee 26:37
So it is worthwhile.
Renee 26:39
I think if everyone has the means to buy to live in.
Renee 26:43
Definitely.
Renee 26:44
You know, I’m not a big person on investment.
Renee 26:47
I’m more about living in.
Renee 26:48
But I think that if you, if you have the opportunity and don’t overlook where you would think is a bad area, like, oh, I wouldn’t live that side of town because it’s bad.
Renee 26:59
Like end of the day property is property.
Renee 27:01
You, everyone starts somewhere, everyone has a million dollars to invest in a property first go.
Renee 27:09
Like, don’t let the idea of this image that everyone portrays of this perfect life with the flashy things become you if that’s not you you can still have the flashy things.
Renee 27:24
Obviously, you can still have the nice inside but your outside of your house hasn’t got to be in the postcode that everyone goes.
Renee 27:31
Oh wow, that’s a nice area.
Renee 27:32
Like just live within your means.
Renee 27:34
Like that’s what I did and I’m able to, you know, have the flashy things that I want still.
Michael 27:39
But also, well, and now you’ve got an asset in your name that’s appreciating in value and will continue to generate wealth for you.
Michael 27:46
in terms of the equity that you got over time.
Michael 27:48
And you know, you mentioned that it was like you saying it was a bit easier to do it then perhaps now because rents are high and everything, but everything’s relative to the moment in time.
Michael 27:55
So it’s hard now than it was five years ago or three years ago or two years ago.
Michael 27:59
But in five years time, we’ll look back now and we’ll say, well, it’s hard now.
Michael 28:02
I should have done it five years ago.
Michael 28:04
So that will all be the case.
Michael 28:06
And I think that couples in with that last point that you mentioned, look outside the areas that perhaps you’re not thinking of initially because the property is property and everything eventually does go up.
Michael 28:15
There are some nuances to that in terms of how much things go up.
Michael 28:18
But overall with property in Australia, you keep it for a period of time, it is going to appreciate in value.
Michael 28:23
So it doesn’t matter where you start as long as you start, I think.
Michael 28:25
And if that’s someone’s ambition and desire, I think those tips are great.
Michael 28:29
Final question was knowing what, you know, now if we could, you know, get a time machine and go back in time to when you started the journey at 27 I guess when you started the savings and what would you tell yourself that?
Michael 28:40
You know, now to that 27 year old Renee?
Renee 28:45
Don’t take everything so seriously, like take everything with a grain of salt. They’re all salespeople, you know, the tactics.
Renee 28:51
So just relax, don’t invest too much into the properties until paper is signed, the settlement is confirmed, and just breathe.
Renee 29:03
Don’t worry yourself about, you know, the little things with it because you’ll end up somewhere completely different anyway.
Michael 29:11
So I think that’s an awesome tip and it’s only really a tip that I think that you can say once you’ve been through it because you say to someone that hasn’t been through it, it’s like, well, they don’t understand that through the other side as well.
Michael 29:23
So that reiterates the fact that as you go, three things you will learn, you will, you will grow and from that you look back and tip like that obviously will totally, you know, resonate with people.
Michael 29:32
So that makes absolute sense to me.
Michael 29:33
Well, thank you so much for your time.
Michael 29:35
Renee, I really appreciate all your input and all the the advice and the tips and the tricks that you utilized.
Michael 29:40
And congratulations once again on purchasing and on the renovations that you’ve done as well because that in itself is probably just as hard as if not harder than buying the house.
Michael 29:48
So, congratulations on all of that and thanks so much.
Renee 29:51
Yeah, thank you again.
Renee 29:52
It’s been really fun.
Renee 29:53
Happy to share my experience.
Michael 29:58
You’ve been listening to the home, run your guide for buying your first home in Australia.
Michael 30:02
This podcast was produced by Lendstreet.
Michael 30:05
Lendstreet is a mortgage broker and home loan specialist that helps first-home buyers find the right loan to meet their needs.
Michael 30:11
We know applying for a loan can be overwhelming and complex so we help guide and support first-home buyers through the process from start to finish to find out more head to our website lendstreet.com.au.
Michael 30:22
We’ve also put a link in the show notes to make sure you don’t miss an episode of the home run.
Michael 30:27
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Michael 30:30
And while you’re there, please leave us a five-star review.
Michael 30:33
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Michael 30:36
I’m Michael Nasser and we’ll be back next episode covering another step on the journey to owning your first home.
