Making your property ownership goal a reality

Has owning a home been a dream that you thought you’d never achieve? With all the talk of property being too expensive to afford and so many memes out there saying millennials prefer avo toast to home ownership, it is easy to think that your dream may not come true. But is that really the case? Would it be possible to buy your first home – and still have a life?

Rudi Kruger of Lexis ® PropIQ believes it is. He offers the following tips for dreamers to turn their aspirations into bricks and mortar reality:

• Picture your dream as a reality: Check out the suburbs you would like to live in or nearby to. Is being near to your place of work important to you? Do you have children – are schools something you need to consider? What about transport facilities, will you need access to a bus stop or taxi rank? For some, making a vision board of their dream home is a helpful tool to keep an eye on the prize. Take photographs or find images online to create your dream home visual and display it prominently.

• Do the practical: Dreams don’t always come true overnight. Find out the behind the scenes costs of buying a home. You need to consider the deposit, transfer duties for homes that exceed R1 million, rates and taxes, bond registration costs and funds for any upgrades that may be necessary to make the home your own. While you won’t know the exact costs of these until your find your dream space, it is important to be prepared for them and be ready to ask the questions.

• Get your finances in order: Check your credit score and make sure that you have no bad debt. If you do have, get that sorted out. Contact the creditor/s you owe money to and negotiate a payment plan.

• Devise a plan: Hiding under a rock doesn’t mean the debt will disappear – it won’t. Get a plan in place. This includes a monthly budget. Track your spending for a few months and see where you may have margin. Are there expenses that you would be willing or able to cut to meet a bond payment? Start saving, it’s a great habit and will help with the upfront costs and make it less likely you will miss the money when you have monthly bond payments to pay.

• Know your limits: Once you have an idea of what your monthly expenses are, what sort of margin you have, go online and complete a home loan calculator on your bank site to find out what buying power you have. You may need to consider buying with a friend or family member to save costs but be clear about expectations and terms of the agreement should one party wish to sell before the other.

• Next step home ownership. Make your dreams a reality. Right, you know your buying power, you have contacted a home loan originator who is looking for the best deal for you, what’s next? From the comfort of your couch, visit www.propiq.co.za and check out the properties you have spotted when doing your research into the suburbs you dream of living in.

By researching online, you take the pressure off and can take your time to check out the property details thoroughly before committing to a viewing with a property agent, or opting for a private deal with the seller, whose details you can access off your online report. You can also get an accurate picture of the current rates, what the property sold for in the past which will give you an idea of the trends in the area and what it offers in terms of space and amenities.

You may be pleasantly surprised, especially in what is currently called a buyers’ market, at how possible it is to turn your dreams into reality.

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