Saving Up For Your First Mortgage

Are you a home owner yet? Or a property investor? Are you currently neither but are saving up for your first place?

If you haven't bought a property to invest in or live in, then you might be wondering how to and how much to save up for your first property and first mortgage.

Depending on how much you wish to borrow, the idea of borrowing up to hundreds of thousands of dollars can be daunting. Remember, only borrow what you can comfortably afford to repay.

How Much Do You Need To Save Up To Buy A Property?

Property expenses vary depending on the property buy price. Miscellaneous expenses are approximately 5% of the house purchase price.

Some of the common expenses that you'll encounter when buying a property are:

* 5% to 10% deposit on the buy price
* Bank deposit cheque fees (usually used to pay stamp duty, the 5% or 10% deposit and the final deposit amount at settlement)
* Stamp Duty to the OSR which can be from $10k and upwards, approx $40k on a $1m house
* Home and Content Insurance - your lender may require insurance to be organised
* Bank fees for attending settlement
* Adjustment costs for council rates, water/sewerage and water usage
* Legal fees for conveyancing
* Land Titles Office Charge

I've written plenty of posts about how to save money, how to understand loans, saving up for an emergency fund and I've also written plenty of posts on our property buying experience.

So in summary, if you want to save up for your first house and mortgage:

1) Aim to save 5% of the purchase price and that will approximately cover the various fees that you'll have, such as the ones listed above
2) Aim to save at least 20% of the purchase price to use as a deposit so that you won't have to pay lenders mortgage insurance
3) Example: On a $1m house, save $200k for the deposit and save $50k(approximately 5%) for the miscellaneous expenses

I've been looking at Newcastle Permanent's fixed rate loans which are rather competitive. Their two year fixed rate is 4.64%pa. Before you start attending open houses and making offers, ensure that you get a pre-approval organised with your lending financial institution. That way, you know what you can borrow and what you can repay.

Buying a property is really exciting and I wish you all the best in saving up for your first, second or multiple properties.

Traffic Statistics For SMG and SEO Manipulation

Traffic to this site has been growing exponentially in 2013 even though I haven't really posted much this year. Over 200,000 visits this year bringing the total visit to 311,360 according to Google Analytics:

If you're a regular reader, thank you for checking in and reading. It's nice to know that several visitors to this blog are reading several pages instead of reading just one page and exiting.

Life grows in complexity as we get older. Work wise, friendship wise, relationship wise and finance wise.

If reading about advertisers and SEO floats your boat, you can visit my previous posts, 'Gaining Traction In The PF Blog Market', 'Traffic Stats: Over 100,000 visits to SMG' and 'Traffic Statistics For SMG'.

I still haven't really actively worked on the SEO of this blog. There's simply too much work to do elsewhere and this blog was unfortunately placed on the back burner. But I'm back and better than ever lol. 

If you blog and wish to grow the traffic to your blog, writing unique content helps. Writing useful, unique content is even better because you will get repeat visits and multiple page views instead of getting one page visitor bounce.

Commenting on other blogs operating in the same niche or industry helps not to mention getting them to link back to your blog.

Firefighters Are Doing An Awesome Job

Of all the worthy amazing occupations to be in, being a firefighter is up there.

With so many fires burning around Sydney, our local firefighters are heroes.

I recall a hot, humid Christmas many years ago. Bush fires were burning all around Sydney and one particular bush and grass fire came racing up the neighbouring farms. If it wasn't for our local fire fighters, we'd have lost our house and all our fruit trees.

Bravely they battled the flames in the searing summer sun, even when exhausted, they continued well into the night and doused the grass and bush fires that surrounded us.

There's nothing more terrifying than facing a wall of flame that is moving so quickly that you fear for your life and your house. It's you with your tiny hose and weak trickle of water against the wall of flame.

Until the fire fighters came to the rescue with their trucks, their professionalism, their experience and their hard work.

I will never forget that day and we are forever thankful and grateful to our fire fighters.

I am thinking of the families who have lost so much to the bush fires in these hard times. I am thinking that our fire fighters are amongst our modern day heroes. I am hoping that it will rain hard and douse the flames.

Property Market Is HOT

Property market in Sydney is crazy and burning hot right now. I wrote about some friends speculating about the property market back in December 2011 and that they were going to hold off on buying. Other friends have been steadily building their property portfolio.

Anyone with the doomsday 'property market will crash' mentality has lost out big time. Since December 2011 when I wrote about property speculation, the market has grown so strongly by $100k to $200k plus per property (this is the ball park figure for houses and semi detached etc, not apartments). Either way, property of all type and in all locations have appreciated in value.

The more property you own, the more your net wealth has increased. Simple as that. Time to get revaluations on all our properties and refinance to buy more for more rental income.

The house that we bought in April 2013 earlier this year has already appreciated in value by $100k. Recent local sales for similar sized house and land have been really strong. The real estate agent told us, "Lucky you bought a few months ago because if you had waited to buy now, you'd be paying $100k extra for the house that you bought."

Is it luck? Or is it just consistent planning and effort?