Tips on How to Buy Well

While you can find thousands of articles in a quick Google search on purchasing a home, we’ve curated the most helpful tips here for purchasing a home or property here in New Zealand.

Our mortgage brokers have decades of experience assisting clients through purchasing a first home, investment properties, and second homes. Although these are our best tips to help guide anyone seeking to buy a home in our area, we’d love to speak with you personally to offer free information and advice to meet your needs.

1. Pull your research from seasoned professionals

Purchasing your own home or investing in a rental property can be overwhelming, especially if it is your first time. If you’re a first time home buyer it may all seem a bit daunting, but that’s where Advanced Mortgage Solutions comes in - we can explain the jargon and help you plan your portfolio. With the right advice and support you can make investing in property a very profitable experience.

We offer some simple ‘rules’ to follow below, however there are many fascists to purchasing well. To kick off your quest to buy well, we recommend familiarizing yourself with how a mortgage broker can help you save time and money and guide you through lending and insurance applications.

2. List Your Location Requirements

Keep in mind that location will affect your costs. Start out with a general area, and then narrow your search. It will help to make a list of your requirements. These should include:

• What’s necessary?
• What’s important?
• What extras you would like? (heat pump, double garage, etc)

Consider shopping, the quality of local schools, transportation, proximity to friends and family, crime and other conditions that affect the quality of life. If you want to go a step further you could narrow your search and get more specific, spend time driving and walking through the neighbourhood, take notice of how the surrounding homes are kept, talk with residents, shopkeepers and the local police.

If you have children, the quality of schools isn’t likely to be negotiable, while the number of shops may be.

3. Making an offer on investment properties

Just like any other purchase, there are property buyers that will pay retail prices, others who pay wholesale price and some that may pay a premium or inflated price.

There are two parts to successfully executing the “buying low” strategy. One is to find a quality real estate that may be bought at less than retail. The other is the way you conduct and submit your offer to buy at a wholesale price.

4. Discover the seller’s motivation

Not all vendors have to sell their property, however there are many reasons that make them very motivated. Clues read like this in their advertising: “vendor overseas, must be sold, price slashed, desperate, mortgagee auction.”

Know what the seller paid - A vendor is more likely to accept a discounted offer if it cuts only into profit. If it cuts below what they actually paid then it is less likely to be successful. There are many sites available to help you find information regarding a particular property.