Welcome to Home Building Like a Boss, the podcast dedicated to helping first home buyers in Perth  build their dream home with ease and excitement.  I'm Jamie, your host and go to building broker.  Are you ready to feel empowered, in control and excited about your building journey? I'll help guide you with expert advice, insider tips and tricks and real life stories to help you navigate the confusing world of home building.

Tune in as I take you on the journey to building your home like a boss. 

So  you're thinking about building a new home. Where do I start first? That is always the question that comes up first. And where do I start first? It's so hard to navigate when you don't know what's going on. So I'm going to give you the lowdown on the first three steps of what you should consider and what you should do first. 

If you're considering building the most important first step is always understanding your finance A lot of people get this one a little bit back to front with going to display homes Looking at builders or looking at established homes, tossing up, build, buy, establish, build, buy, build, buy, build, buy. But the first thing you want to do is understand your finance budget.

And it will also change if you are going established and if you're building, especially as a first home buyer, because of the grants come into play and your stamp duty also changes quite a lot. So you want to know, alright, am I building? Am I buying? Or if I'm looking at both options and tossing them up, what is my finance eligibility and budget?

Because let's face it, our dreams are always further away from our budget and reality. So I always find people are looking at homes that they can't afford first before understanding what their realistic budget is. There is no point looking at an 800, 000 house and land package. If you can only afford a 600, 000 house and land package, because you're going to look at all these nice designs is nice finishes, these big blocks, all these nice fancy things, and then finance is going to come back later at me like, Oh, sorry.

You can only have a 600K house on land package, and you're going to feel super disheartened because you can't squish down 200K you've got to change blocks, look at a different plan, remove inclusions that is too far, a big of a jump. So to avoid that disheartened and sad, overwhelmed feeling, you want to understand your finance budget.

First, you can either go to a finance broker directly. Or a mortgage broker or a bank. I usually always recommend going to a mortgage broker because they can shop and look at the best options and show you everything and educate and support you along the way, compared to one bank, who's only going to show you their one product.

Your finance broker will help you with a letter of eligibility. So you'll do your incomes, your debt, savings, living expenses, that kind of stuff to work out. Okay, cool. What is my borrowing capacity? And then what is my deposit? I can also help out with this. So depending if you go to a broker or a sales consultant or a builder, they will also be able to assist with this process.

Once you have your finance number and your eligibility, and you know, roughly where you're at, let's say 600 K. Okay, cool. Now, let's start having a look at some areas that I like and what are my options. So, the second step to start starting is looking for land. Now, this part can also be super overwhelming if you don't know what you're looking for, where to go, or where to start.

As a building broker, I help my clients through each stage of this process. So I help them understand their finance eligibility first. And then once we've understood that we work backwards to see what kind of block and area is going to fit inside the budget. So, you know, if it's a 600, 000 house and land package, and we're looking for land, that's 350, 000.

There's only 250 left for a build. It's probably not going to be enough. So we need to rejig the numbers. Okay. The land has to be a little bit cheaper so we can fit more in the build budget. So with number two, you want to be looking at your location. Where do you want to live? Do you want to live north of the river?

Do you want to live south of the river? Do you want to be close to family, schools, train stations, shops? Do you want to be on the beach side of the freeway in Perth? Or do you want to be on the east side of the freeway in Perth? And do you want to be close to the city? Do you want to be further away from the city?

Do you want a huge farmhouse block, an acreage? All of those things come into play when narrowing down your location and your location will heavily impact your budget. So you can say, right, we're looking at land now, but we're still keeping the budget from step one in mind so we don't blow out the budget.

Then you want to pick your block. Then you want to pick your block based on your location that you've narrowed down. Okay, cool. So we've narrowed down the location. What kind of block fits in the budget, size, orientation, frontage, and the shape, keeping those things in mind. When you're picking, because then that will come into play when you're picking your builder.

So then you want to pick your builder and design your home based on your block, keeping the frontage, the shape, the orientation, the site works. You don't want to go picking a plan or a builder before looking at blocks because. The same thing is going to happen. You're going to start looking at, let's say a huge 15 meter wide designs, right?

But the budget only allows for 12 and a half block and a 12 and a half design. You now have to squish that design down, which isn't really possible. It shifts the whole dynamic of the design. You now need to look at 12 and a half wide design. So you might get disappointed, disheartened, sad again, because you've been fallen in love with a 15 meter wide design, but it doesn't fit in with.

So, you see how it's kind of like working through those steps. That's your first three most important steps when going through the building process. The initial initial, where do I start  is finding the information about the building process. You know, how does it work? What are the hidden costs?  Pre-construction, construction, what are inclusions?

How do the progress payments work? How do house and land packages work? All that kind of stuff is you want to get an idea of how the building process works before you even entertain display shopping, looking at things. And display shopping is great, but You're going in there falling in love with the design that has an extra inclusions that you probably can't fit in your budget and you're looking at all these nice things, but you still don't understand how the building process works.

So I always suggest, and this is what I do for my clients as a building broker is book in an info session, book in a free info session from someone independent. So you can find out. How it works and get the information that you need to make an educated and informed decision on whether building is right for you.

You can ask questions, really understand the process and then from there, once you've got a grasp on the process, you've asked questions, you know how it all works, then you can start going through that. finance eligibility, looking for land, then doing your design display, shopping and looking at builders and things like that, because you understand the process.

It's easier to grasp and, and go do the other things because you've got a good foundation of the process. A little recap on the first three steps is finance, your location, and your block. Really where to start, reach out to someone, ask questions, feel free to book in a discovery call on the link below.

And I can help you. I have clients all the time that come to me. I have no idea where to start. What do I do? You know? So just book in a call. Let's have a chat. Have that info session. And that gives you all the information that you need to know on where to go and what to do and understand everything that you need to for building a new home. 

Thank you so much for tuning in to the Home Building Like a Boss podcast.  I hope you enjoyed today's episode and learned something new. Remember, you've got this and I've got your back. Until next time, stay inspired, stay informed and stay confident on your building journey. I can't wait to chat with you on the next episode. 

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