Buying that first home can be scary .Following some simple rules. Here are 5 things to do.

1. Get your loan preapproved in advance

A preapproval is simply an indication of what you can borrow and gives you a feel for your repayments and any other costs. Make sure you understand the term of your mortgage and any additional costs especially low equity fees and whether the bank will require a valuation. You can get started by doing an application.

WHAT WILL THIS COST? WON’T COSTYOU A CENT.

2. Talk to professionals, friends, experts

Try and talk to a real estate agent to act as your Buyers Agent. That can be useful to get a feel for the market and for properties in an area. We can help you by providing property intelligence and local sales data to help you better understand the market. We will help you with the whole process and provide useful feedback on the property and negotiating the price. We’re in the market every day helping Buyers. We know what’s hot and what’s not, and where to find the best deals.

When it comes to your mortgage don’t settle for second best. If you can use a top mortgage broker for free, why settle for someone less experienced.

3. Know the neighborhood

Spend time in an area. Have breakfast and/ or lunch at a cafe, walk around the shops. Find out about the schools and public transport. Go back at night and different times of the day. Go gone down the street and talk to neighbors,businesses.

4. Be realistic

Look at a lot of property. That way you will get a feel for what’s available and it will make the trade-offs that you need to make, easier. All properties have problems and what you need to decide is whether you can live with those problems in the short term until they can be fixed. With older houses the roof will often need maintenance, repair or replacement (in the next 5-10 years.)

5. Put in offers

Bugger perfection – there is not one property out there for you. There are a number of properties out there that would be great at the right price. If you’re not totally sold on a particular property, at what price would you be? There is no harm in putting in low offers and who knows, it could pay-off! If you are doing low offersdon’t bother putting the offer in writing and putting the Agent through the whole process. Just tell them a price you’d be happy to negotiate at and if it’s no deal, walk away.