First time home buyer

So...
I am totally CLUELESS with all the jargon involved when buying a home...

we have been given an opportunity to buy the property we are currently living in..

Is there any good WWW or info you can recommend i read as a good starting point ??

I have looked into the first time home owner grant and thats about it so far..

Any advice or tips appreciated. Many thanks

Biggest advice I can give is - make sure you know your budget, and don't go over it. Banks are usually willing to lend you more than you think, and it can tempt you!! We could have borrowed $300k when we bought our house 2 years ago, but I had done a realistic budget and knew that would be too much in weekly payments, when you took into consideration rates, insurance and life! We ended up with just over $200k.

There are a few of us on here who are experienced in the property industry (either in law, or in real estate) so if you have any questions at all, just ask! Someone will be bound to help!

Are you looking at getting a Welcome Home Loan?

I would also hold off as long as you can to get the biggest deposit possible. Over the last 3 years we have paid around $100,000 into our mortgage and only around $15,000 has come off the principal - the rest is interest!!! I now wish we had kept renting for a few more years and put the money we would have used for mortgage payments towards a bigger deposit.

HuntersMama is right... difinitely go for a bigger deposit if possible. We have quite a small loan and in just over a year and $12,000 worth of payments, we have paid off just over $3000 principal. Even things like a small increase in your payments or paying weekly instead of montly can make a significant difference to how much interest you pay overall.
Don't forget to factor in rates, insurance and set money aside for maintenance every week as well. There is no landlord to ring if the roof starts leaking or if the hot water cylinder explodes. So like minik8e says, make sure you budget all that in when you are looking at how much you can afford all up. Remember the bank wants you to owe more, so they get more in interest. They don't really care if you can't afford the payments, because they can always just sell the house anyway. That sounds very doom and gloom... sorry!!!
Also just a side note, if you are going thru a bank and not a mortgage broker, be wary of buying mortgage protection insurance. It's a good thing to have but we found the ones thru our bank were ridiculously expensive, and it was cheaper to do a combined policy thru our main insurance company (and the policy made a lot more sense as well).

We don't have mortgage protection insurance, as DH is the main earner and the military isn't covered.

We are able to pay our rates fortnightly by direct debit, it comes out the same day as our mortgage - much easier only having to find $100 a ft night, instead of $700 each quarter. House insurance isn't that expensive, and you won't be able to take out a mortgage without it.

Firstly do a budget! Can you afford the weekly payments, mortgage protection insurance, house insurance, contents insurance, interest when it goes up and mostly likely will and rates.

I agree with the others the bigger deposit you have the better off you will be in the long run.

Heres depressing, we rented a place for only 7 months, when we got our statement after we moved out , we had paid in total $25,000.
$25,000 for a house that wasn't ours .

We've managed to pay over 30K off our mortgage in 4 years - there is no way we could have saved that amount of money in that time. Our mortgage is now less than 180K on a house worth at least 350K, its nice to know we own it as much as the bank does.

Do your research about who you go with for a mortgage. Dh had his mortgage through BNZ for his property he had prior to us getting together so automatically we just went with them for the house we brought together. I didn't know much about it so just said ok.

In hindsight it was stupid. BNZ never have the lowest interest rates and we should have shopped around. We are now looking at switching to kiwibank when our mortgage comes up for renewel at the end of next month. Its amazing how much better off we will be once we switch.

minik8e wrote: mumzrule - are you going to be doing the revolving credit kind of thing? Live off the credit card, while all your wages go onto the mortgage, then pay the credit card once a month, therefore reducing the amount of interest you pay, while earning bonus bits from the credit card??

Yep, we only just found out about it. Do you know much about it?? Wether it is as good as it sounds??