'I lost 2kg from stress': What it's like being a first-home buyer in Sydney's property market
In Sydney’s expensive and highly competitive property market, first-home buyers are likely to use all their savings, lose their Saturdays and even shed a few kilos.
Take it from my recent experience, when we lost multiple properties and I lost two kilos from pure stress.
The market is intense, and if it wasn’t for a larger-than-expected inheritance upon the death of a family member, I would have continued to watch prices rise from the sidelines.
But as husband and I found ourselves as contenders in the market, we dove right in with what we thought were realistic expectations of what we wanted, and could afford.
Our wish-list was fairly simple: two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen that felt like a kitchen, and an internal laundry.
We didn’t care if the fittings were old as they weren’t falling apart.
Our two absolute non-negotiables concerned the location: a maximum 15-minute walk from a train/metro station and on the south side of Parramatta Road in the Inner West, to be near our only family.
As a property journalist, I assumed my journey would be easy – after all, I write about property every day.
Hah. I was not prepared for the chaos.
The shuffling through rooms with the same strangers all looking for the same thing,, the back-and-forth with agents, the seemingly endless Saturdays lost to inspections, the emotional attachment to places that weren’t even ours, the stress of not making a mistake, and – above all – sticking to our budget. It was harder than we expected.
The first property we fell in love with was a two-bedroom apartment on a busy street in the Inner West. It was up three flights of stairs, had two balconies, and provided plenty of natural light for my plant collections and walls for my bookshelves. It had a price guide of $850,000, well within our budget.
Two weeks before it was listed, another larger unit in the same complex sold for $910,000.
We put in an offer of $905,000. It seemed fair. The agent said it was a good offer. The vendor apparently thought the offer was good, but said they still wanted to go to auction.
We set the maximum we’d bid at $980,000 because nothing else in the area was selling above that.
On auction night, within one minute of the opening bid, the property hit $1 million. It sold for $1.07 million.
First bust.
Then there was an apartment in Marrickville with a price guide of $900,000. When we submitted an offer of $1.05 million the lead agent politely told us no.
On the week of the auction, the secondary agent called us and said it was unlikely the apartment would sell for more than $1.1 million, which was our absolute max.
My husband and I considered involving our solicitor to review the documents, but we decided against it because we’d already moved on from it, based on the original conversation.
It sold a day before the auction for more than $1.2 million.
Second bust.
At this point, we had viewed over 30 apartments in the span of three months, and I was exhausted and ready to call it quits.
I started talking about going further west to avoid being priced out, but my husband persuaded me to give it another three months.
Then we found an apartment in Lewisham. It had a $900,000 price guide, which was immediately increased to $950,000 after the first open house.
Unlike all the other places we’d seen, this one immediately felt like home. When we got in the car after the viewing, we both teared up the same way a bride cries when she finds the right dress.
The place wasn’t perfect. It was darker than all the places we’d seen, the balcony was a slim verandah that wouldn’t hold many plants, the kitchen was an awkward shape, and the second bedroom was on the smaller side. But we loved it.
There was just something about it that we couldn’t put our finger on, and we immediately threw out our rule of “we will not go to our max”. We were determined to fight for this place, even if it meant stretching ourselves financially thin.
Our mortgage broker wasn’t a big fan of us going to our max and encouraged us to explore more options. We reluctantly listened to her, but still sent our solicitor the documents to review.
The next place we found was in Stanmore, and it ticked all the boxes. Two bedrooms, a nice kitchen, an internal laundry, an abundance of natural light, and on the top floor with a spacious balcony for my plants.
It didn’t make us cry, but it was exactly what we wanted, and it came with a price guide of $850,000.
After some back-and-forth phone calls, we learned the vendor was only open to pre-auction offers higher than $930,000.
Three days after viewing the apartment, we made an official offer of $965,000; we also gave a very explicit deadline of 48 hours, as we planned to attend the auction for the Lewisham apartment (the one that made us cry) if our offer wasn’t accepted.
We created a sense of urgency and put the ball in their court.
It worked – they verbally accepted.
We began telling people our good news, but that was a rookie error. The day we were supposed to sign the official contract, the agent reached out to other interested parties .
One of them countered with $980,000. However, their solicitor had yet to review the documents or send the Section 66W form.
We offered to match their offer and sign there and then, but the vendor decided to give them extra time and set the deadline at noon the next day. The agent promised us that if the competing party didn’t have their documents in order by the deadline, the property was ours.
I began grieving a place I had already started to call home. I got so sick that I couldn’t eat, and I didn’t sleep that night.
This may all sound very dramatic, but there is something about the property journey that is so emotional; the hopes, the dreams, the shattered realities.
My husband and I discussed how much we were willing to offer if it did become a pre-auction bidding war and agreed on $1.05 million – $200,000 over the price guide.
At 9.30am, the agent called. The competing party wanted an extension to their deadline, but he said if we matched their $980,000 offer, they’d send the contract in the next hour.
When I heard those words, I began to bawl. It was ours.
It was the right call to opt for this apartment rather than the one that made us cry in the car, because that one sold for over $1.14 million at auction, significantly above our limit.
Buying a property was probably the most stressful experience in my life but we’re in, we’ve done it, and we couldn’t be more excited about having a place that is entirely ours. The next hurdle is convincing my husband to let me paint the kitchen mustard yellow.
We recommend
We thought you might like
States
Capital Cities
Capital Cities - Rentals
Popular Areas
Allhomes
More
