First Home Buyer Tips

Hi aitsmoi

Firstly welcome to the forum and I hope you enjoy your time with us.

Congratulations on making the decision to start your venture into property.

Should I go through a mortgage broker or should I directly deal with the bank/ loan providers? What are the pros and cons?

Ok firstly i must declare an interest here being a Broker. One of the advantages of deal with a Broker is that he/she can assess your overall position and requirements not only now but also into the future and make recommendation on a product / lender with all of the facts. No lender is going to ever tell you that you do better down the road.
There are no costs in dealing with a Broker as they are remunerated by the lender with who the business is placed.
In many cases a Broker can negotiate a deal thru where the client could not and especially in the current climate this can be very important.
Personally i find my clients utilise my services because they now that i can value add to their application and It is not merely a matter of looking at who offers the cheapest interest rate.

When inspecting a property, what are the things to keep in mind? What information should I get from the real estate about the property?
Tou have mentioned that you are looking at Units so i would make sure all details on the Body Corporate are fully available to you prior to inspecting. This would included the Annual contributions, current Sinking Fund balance and what is the intended expenditure on the property over the next few years.

What if the property walls have cracks on them? Does that get fixed prior to purchasing? Will that help me negotiate the cost, etc?
This will depend on whether the cracks are internal to the unit or externally.
Externally they will be the responsibility of the Body Corporate however internally you can certainly negotiate the price if these are present. Make sure they are not merely gyprock cracks which can form over time as the seller is unlikely to want to discount the price for this.

How do I get information about the neighbours of the property?
Other than talk to other tenants / owners in the block it is difficult. Might want to pop back on say a Friday / Saturday night and see how they behave. 

How do I find out the average property value in a particular suburb?
Services like Residex or RP Data give you an indication.

We just bought our first home 6 months ago, so great to hear that you're thinking of buying a property.

You can ask the agent about the quarterly strata, council and water rates. Sometimes they maybe able to tell you how much is left in the admin and sinking funds, but more often, you'll need to get a strata search done through a conveyancer or property lawyer to find out more about the strata. The strata check can also reveal the by-laws  and any major issues they have been brought up. However, I wouldn't recommend that you do a strata search for every property that you inspect as it cost a few hundred dollars to do so. I only did mine when I've got my offer accepted.

Past sales reports from Residex or RP Data, like what Richard mentioned, is really useful. You can see what your neighbours paid for their units if there were sales in the last 12-24 months.

All the best.

Sometimes talking to the strata managers to see if they have any problems with tenants can be useful. We had an interesting case with one of our clients where we introduced ourselves to the strata managers while doing the renovations, and when they heard we’d removed the tenants from number 16, they were over the moon because these particular tenants were a nightmare.

Of course, it might be more difficult as a prospective buyer, rather than a project manger or owner of an actual apartment in the building…

But perhaps there’s a way you can call them to touch base as a prospective owner in the building, asking (maybe) some questions about rules for renovations or what you’re allowed to have on the property, what changes (like security) should be “in keeping” with the overall look, and then get them chatting about the type of people in there.

Often the strata mangers don’t have a vested interest in telling you the place is a good one to live in – they’re the ones who have to put up with all the problems, and can give you a few pointers as to problem neighbours! Telling an agent, who does have a vested interest, that you want to talk to strata personally so you can be clear about changes you’d like to make being okay in principle, is a good way to get around this!

I hope this helps!