Buying your first home can be a heady mix of excitement and trepidation. Not surprising, given it’s probably the biggest investment you will ever make. And while making the leap from tenant to homeowner is a big one – both financially and emotionally – it’s one that comes with plenty of satisfaction.
Brisbane couple Nastassia Tognini, 26, and Neno Baric, 30, bought their first home in February after spending about 12 months house hunting.
“Every weekend we would go to open-house inspections – sometimes six houses back to back in one day,” Nastassia says. “While it has been a little stressful at times, when you actually find the house that’s right, you kind of just know and it makes sense. So we are pretty content with our decision.”
The couple paid $690,000 for a two-bedroom original worker’s cottage in East Brisbane, only a few kilometres from the CBD. They decided to fix 70 per cent of their home loan and keep 30 per cent variable to take advantage of an offset account.
And while their modest home might require a little bit of work, Nastassia says it was a compromise they were happy to make to be close to the city.
“It’s a cute little cottage on a small block – only 405m2 – and the bathroom was a bit of a mess. Neno is 6’5” and he couldn’t even stand under the shower because it was so low, so we are in the process of fixing that,” she says.
“But it was the location we were after. We both work full-time and long hours so we didn’t want to sacrifice on all the things we love – like being able to pop down to a café or drive to see our friends within 10 minutes. We really didn’t want to move too far out of the city. So we were happy to live in a smaller house that needed a bit of work on a smaller block of land to be close to the city.”
Nastassia and Neno had been renting an apartment together for the past few years at Highgate Hill – another residential suburb close to the centre of Brisbane. When they originally decided to buy their first home together, they hadn’t ruled out buying an apartment.
“We’ve been together for about five and half years,” Nastassia says. “We’ve travelled together and lived together – we knew we had a future together, even though we are not married and don’t have kids yet. We knew what we liked and have similar tastes, so it was just a natural progression to buy a house together.
“But when we first started thinking about it, we didn’t know if we wanted to buy an apartment as an investment property in the first instance, just to get into the market, or buy a house that we wanted to live in and potentially raise a family there.”
Before they started seriously searching, there were a number of things the couple needed to consider – firstly what their borrowing capacity was and their ability to meet loan repayments.
“Neno is an accountant so has a pretty good grasp of the financial side of things, but I really needed to understand those things myself so we spoke to a mortgage broker pretty early in the piece,” Nastassia says.
“That way I could find out exactly what our borrowing power was – and I could understand our capacity to repay the loan, as well as what deposit was required and any other costs involved.”
They also researched the Brisbane property market and made the decision to opt for a house rather than an apartment, believing it to be a wiser investment with more growth potential. To accommodate this, they expanded their initial search area further, taking in suburbs a greater distance from the city.
So it was a more than pleasant surprise when they found the inner-city worker’s cottage within their price bracket.
“We were lucky enough that this property came up on our real estate app,” Nastassia says. “So we popped in quickly and saw it and loved it. It was a deceased estate and had been on the market for a few months and had been reduced in price. We had seen a lot of other places and knew this was the one, so we put in an offer straight away and were lucky enough to get it.”
The couple were able to move quickly with their offer because they had already gained pre-approval on a home loan.
“We went through a pre-approval process, so that when we went to make an offer on a property, we knew we had the money. We still put financial clauses on the offer, but it meant we weren’t so stressed about gaining the loan – we knew the money was there,” Nastassia says.
“It also helped that we had seen so many other properties. Any house that showed potential, we would write down a pros and cons list of every aspect of the house, which helped narrow the search and make decisions. We had to be pragmatic rather than just thinking emotionally. So when we found this one, we knew it was the one.”
As well as the location, the other big draw card for the couple was the original character of the old worker’s cottage.
“We were happy to buy something that wasn’t brand new and that we could improve ourselves – something we could add our own touch to,” Nastassia says. “It’s an original Queenslander style built between 1910 and 1920, but all of the VJ boards had been covered over. We decided that we wanted to expose them again – to bring the house back to its natural character. We had to pay people to come in and remove the asbestos that was in the house, but otherwise we have done the demolition work ourselves. We plan to renovate in the future, maybe adding an extra bedroom.”
Do the couple have any regrets?
“None,” Nastassia says. “It may have been hard at times and it was a real learning experience, but now it’s really exciting to have our first home. It’s also a real sense of achievement. We’ve worked hard to get here and now we’re paying off something that is ours as opposed to paying rent to someone else. And every improvement we make will ultimately benefit us. We have an asset now and that is a really great feeling. It’s the Australian dream to own your own home – and now we do.”
Buying a house is one of the biggest financial decisions you can make, if you’ve considered entering the property market, consider steps to limit your financial stress. Find out more here.
