This week on First-Home Buyers, Sarah Swain recalls how a family passion for the property market helped her realise why she prefers to have money for travel than a larger mortgage.
If you have a story to share about your first property – what you purchased, where and why – email epower@nine.com.au
I've always been interested in houses and property. When I was a teenager my dad started buying, renovating and either selling or renting out houses in the UK, where we lived.
I think at one point my parents had five terrace houses, or maybe even more, that they rented out. Owning the homes was my dad's retirement project. He worked in a bank, as an assistant bank manager.
When he retired he would do a lot of the renovation work himself on the homes. But sadly, he died from cancer, around five years after he retired. I was 17.
I bought my first home, in Scotland where I was living when I was 21, with the help of some money he left me.
It wasn't a massive inheritance, but £35,000 was more than enough for a deposit for a traditional tenement flat in Glasgow.
I paid £85,000 with my partner at the time (making sure to get the legal paperwork to protect that deposit if we broke up).
The flat was in need of some modernisation and had a very interesting kitchen where it looked as though it was homemade.
It had a tiled worktop with square tiles with the kitchen built from wood.
We couldn't afford to renovate, so we turned it into an American-themed kitchen, as you do when you're 21.
We painted it red, white and blue and hung a giant American flag I found at a flea market in New York on the wall. At the time I loved America and Elvis and Breakfast at Tiffany's. The local paper's home section even did a story about it.
I kept the apartment for about five or six years. My partner and I actually rented it out when we came to Australia the first time as backpackers in 2004.
When we went back to the United Kingdom we broke up. My mum had to help me buyout my partner because I wanted to keep the flat.
I kept it but in the end decided to sell it for £125,000 to buy a more modern flat in an old Victorian school building that had been converted into apartments.
I had the tiniest apartment, but it was all modern and new – and even had a built in sound system with speakers in the bedroom and bathroom. It cost £140,000, plus around £80 service charge, or strata, which was a lot.
I lived there for about eight years when I was working at the Evening Times in Glasgow.
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I always wanted to move back to Australia though, but while I was waiting for my visa, I moved to Dubai and rented my flat out. (While in Dubai I lived in the world's tallest residential building, and sitting on the balcony on the 29th floor was hair raising.)
The flat was still rented out when I came to Australia but it became a bit of a hassle and I wanted to try and buy something in Sydney. So I sold it.
I ended up selling the unit for a loss of £125,000 because prices had gone down, as they do, by that time.
It was 2015 when I decided I wanted to buy in the suburb of Alexandria, in Sydney's inner city, because the transport links were good and it's close to everything. I didn't have a car and still don't.
So I started looking at places. They were going very quickly. Even at that point you would go to auctions and the units would go for way more than what the agent had estimated.
I would see places advertised with offers around $600,000 and the next week it would still be advertised and have offers around $650,000 because someone had made an offer and so they'd put the price up.
So I went to so many viewings. I identified some buildings that I liked around the area in Zetland, Waterloo, Alexandria or Erskineville. But Erskineville was quite expensive.
During the search I got to know a few real estate agents and one of the agents called me and said there was an apartment in a building I had seen. It wasn't advertised yet and the owner wanted a quick sale.
I went to see it. It was rented out, so it still had people living there, but I was one of the first to see it.
The agent told me what the owner wanted for it and I could afford it so I put in an offer at the asking price, which was $585,000, and got it accepted. So, in the end, it was quite simple.
I'd always thought that at some point I would move and buy a two-bedroom place, or something a bit bigger.
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I am quite interested in houses and property so I do keep an eye out for what places are selling at and I've realised that a jump to a two bedroom is a lot more.
You've also got to pay stamp duty and solicitors costs and so I think I'd rather have a relatively small mortgage and stay where I am.
Having a house (and a place to keep a horse, which is my dream) would also be a goal… but it seems completely unattainable in Sydney and in fact much of Australia.
So during COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 I was staring at my kitchen for so long that I knew that I wanted to do it up.
I didn't get a whole new kitchen, but I replaced the cupboard doors, some of the appliances and got a new stone bench top, spending about $12,000.
I also got a new custom-made vanity unit in the bathroom,
So I've decided to spend some money on renovating because I don't think I'd be able to move, to afford that jump of, say, $300,000 more, for a two-bedroom place.
My partner and I have talked about having a bigger mortgage but have decided we'd rather have the money for holidays.
Plus, as he's self employed it might be harder to borrow much more.
Next on the list is getting the flooring replaced with something less tacky than the slightly orange laminate, and renovating the small laundry, as the vanity is starting to fall apart.
And we're also planning a couple of the trips to the US, including for our wedding, which we'd never be able to do if we had a bigger mortgage.
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