PHOTO: First-home buyers Alexandria and William started the mortgage approval process in April, buying a 3-bedroom home in Hamilton (Dinsdale) for $747,000 in July. Photo credit: Supplied.
After making a successful offer on a house on the second attempt, a young Hamilton couple says getting onto the property ladder was easier than they expected.
It comes as high demand combined with low housing stock is forcing up property prices, the national average asking price rising to $893,794 in July, an increase of $146,628 year-on-year. The Real Estate Institute of New Zealand (REINZ) reports the national median selling price was $820,000 in June, up 28.7 percent on the same time last year.
Having spoken to a mortgage adviser and starting the approval process in April, Hamilton couple Alexandria and William said as the market is so tough for first-home buyers, at first they felt “overwhelmed”.
“As we continued along and got our pre-approval, it created light at the end of the tunnel and we found the process a lot easier than we had expected in the end,” Alexandria said.
After two months’ of extra saving to show “clean spending”, a suggestion made to them by their mortgage adviser, the couple got finance approved on July 7. Their first offer wasn’t accepted, but their second offer of $747,000 on a 3-bedroom home in the Hamilton suburb of Dinsdale was.
For sale by negotiation, the house is on a 600-square-metre section and has a single garage.
“We put in one offer on a house and missed out… it was our second offer we put in that was accepted, which is the house we purchased,” Alexandria explained.
Their joint deposit, estimated to be 12-13 percent of the purchase price (around $97,000) was mostly savings from KiwiSaver, to which they each contributed since starting work around 10 years ago.
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