kjp

Hey! I haven’t proof read this (not going to) – prefer to sleep. You’ve been warned! :)

So, there’s this place that I went to on Saturday – I’m thinking about putting an offer on it. Needless to say I’m a tad stressed about it. Anyhow.

It seems that some of the major risks when buying a place are:
* you buy a dud – there’s something majorly wrong with it. Maybe this is ok if you’re a renovator, but that’s not me. Can mitigate this by building / pest inspection, etc.
* you pay too much. Can mitigate this by doing heaps of research, and having a good idea of the market / getting a professional valuation.
* you don’t buy what you want – you get dragged into something bigger / more expensive than what you want.

For me a worry is that I have looked at only 3 houses - all in the same part of the same suburb – and nothing elsewhere. This is simply because I’d looked at a townhouse and flat or two, and had gotten onto the idea of a house. I haven’t done much research at all into prices, etc… haven’t looked at realestate.com.au – just been going to open homes (as advertised in the local paper).

The first couple of places I looked at were a flat and townhouse. In both cases I wasn’t happy with living right on top of your neighbours – I want to have a little bit of space around me. It’s the intensity / proximity of being so close to your neighbours that is of concern to me: having random strangers walk past your front door is just a bit wrong. So after checking them out (a few weeks back), I pretty much decided on a house, or a flat / townhouse that was separated a bit from the neighbours.

The thing is, for me, financially, if I want to be very close to work with a reasonable place, then it means a flat. But being ridiculously close (like I am now – 3 minutes), is a bit unrealistic. The place that I’m looking at is close still – it would be about 10 – 15 minutes drive to work. It’s a bit further out from town, though....

By a house though is tricky, in some ways I want as much land as possible – that’s the part that goes up in value – but this isn’t realistic (from a $$) perspective; and I don’t really want heaps of land – more work for maintenance, etc.

On reasonable price – at an auction of a similar type place just up the road, that house went for a bit under $350,000. So the price for the place I’m interested in is probably realistic – maybe a tad high?

Issues with the place:
* flatness of the land / drainage in the case of flood / storm water drains
* location of main room within the house – at the front of the house – cars (sound, lights) going past at the middle of the night: especially in summer (open window) – but I don’t need to sleep in the main room.
* noise - from the major road that is ~0.65km away at rush hour; train noise; plane noise
* fans / air-conditioning?

To do list:
* Talk to the home loan guy about the amount I can borrow, my savings, portability of the loan with the company he suggested – ING loan? (tomorrow, 8 am)
* Ring up the real estate agent to say I’m interested in it (she’s likely to ring me, I suspect)
* Check out the place on Saturday morning with a sensible head (hi mum!)
* Check out realestate.com.au and get an idea of prices for the alternate suburbs around where I’m thinking of
* Figure out what I should offer (assuming I make an offer).
* Learn a bit about the history of the development… what was there 15 years ago?