Finding a property to buy is easy; it’s wrangling your finances that’s the hard part… at least, that’s what you’d think. I can tell you from experience that finding the right property is half the battle, including when it comes to marshalling the bank to give you a loan. Obviously, that rides on a whole bunch of factors, but one of them is having a specific house that you plan to make an offer on, and if it doesn’t meet the bank’s exacting standards of being suitable guarantee for them, you’re not getting that loan.
I know this because I tried it with a house in Wyong that I found out about through daveslist. I really thought I was going to get it – the price was so low, I couldn’t see how the bank could possibly turn me down. But they came back to me with a rejection on the grounds that the house was (a) riddled with termites, (b) built next to an old landfill site that had been questionably covered over and (c) in such poor repair it was only worth 70% of what I was looking at paying.
Back to my original point, though: finding a property to buy is hard, especially if you’re trying to find one that’s cheap and simultaneously get a loan approved. That’s why I’m thinking of finding a buyers advocate to hire. Melbourne might not have as dubious a real estate market as some of the other places I’ve tried my luck in, but still, it could be worth it if it makes my efforts more effective.
With the place in Wyong, I was like, mates, I’ll be the one living in it, not you. Their response? If I bailed out on the mortgage, they’d be left with ownership of the property as collateral, and it wasn’t worth the amount of money I was proposing they lend me. In retrospect, it’s hard to fault their logic, and it worked out quite well for me in the end because I’m now not saddled with that dodgy dump.