THE SEARCH FOR YOUR FIRST HOME

You have your finances in order and you have determined how much you can afford to spend.
Now comes the fun part. What type of house do you want to buy?
You will probably have people who will say useful but deeply condescending things for you, like: “Your first house shouldn’t be your dream house. As if you could otherwise, have planned to secure a nine-bedroom villa with an interior swimming pool.
When you start your search, the prospect of finding the right property among the thousands listed, it may seem daunting. How do you find the right one?
What if the perfect appeared the minute you became unconditional on a single the road?
There is no easy way to find the right home for you, but there are ways to refine the search a little.
1-Apartment or house?
One of the first things that many first-time home buyers have to decide is whether they you want to buy an apartment or a townhouse, or an independent house.
Often when you look at what you can buy for a typical first home buyer budget, there will be a lot of apartments and units in your ads results, and some entry-level homes. To determine what is going to be the best option for you, you will have to take into account your situation.
Apartments can be perfect for many reasons. They are often newly built with all the recent appliances and the amenities that go with it.
They are often close to public transport, or closer to city centers than free- standing houses.
There is a minimum maintenance to be done on them by the owner —the legal entity will take care of most of the external work — and there are sometimes a community feels with other people who live in the building or complex.
But on the downside, there may be problems with the building and it’s it is important to do your due diligence before buying. You just have to look at the problems with leaky buildings in the last few decades to see what can happen. To to some extent, you are at the mercy of other apartment owners in the build when work needs to be done.
If you end up owning a unit in a building that requires a lot of maintenance or remediation complete, you might find that you’re on the hook for part of a really big repair bill with limited influence on when it is due.

My advice is to be wary of apartments built at the turn of the century.
In 2022, there were still apartments that sold for less than people had paid in 2010, due to the sanitation works necessary to bring them up to standard.
If all you can afford is a strangely affordable apartment, you might be better off off to continue renting.
If you are looking at an existing building, you can get some protection by read the minutes of the recent general meetings to see what the problems are be treated.
As stated earlier, you will probably pay a legal entity fee to cover things like maintenance of common areas and building insurance. The body companies may also have rules that you must follow. You will have your say what the legal entity does, but you will only be one vote among many others.
Apartments tend to be smaller than houses, you may find that as you grow get out of your property earlier, especially if you have children. You can be more limited in the cosmetic work you can do to improve the value of the apartment.
In general, the value of apartments increases more slowly than that of houses because a large part of the value of most properties is in the land component. When you own an apartment, you own a smaller part of the land on which the building is located because it is shared between many accommodations.
Townhouses have some of the advantages of apartments-a community feel, maybe a legal entity — and potentially some of the disadvantages.
Some townhouse developments, particularly in Auckland, have had weatherproofing problems. But they can be a more affordable way to buy a little more space than you would get in an apartment.
2-Maybe you’re looking for a house instead
Many people want to find themselves in their own home. If you can afford to buy a self-contained property is ideal for many buyers.
When you own a house, you have a lot of control over what happens with that. Usually no one sets rules about whether you can have pets or not (with the exception of certain areas with protected wild species that have alliances for pets, and your local council could intervene if you have a menagerie that bothers neighbors), and you can paint the house in the color of your choice, provided you are not in a housing estate with rules about the colors of the house.
But a lot of New Zealand houses are quite old and can have problems that you can’t see immediately when you walk through an open house. It is a good idea to ask a builder to check any house you are thinking of, for report potential problems.
While rental buildings are required to comply with heating standards and insulation, the same does not apply to owner-occupied homes, so you may need to spend a little money to make your property warmer and drier, especially if it’s been a few years.
You might find that for the same budget as an apartment, you look at a self-contained home much further out of town, potentially without the same transport links that can make living in an apartment easier.

You are also on the hook for all repairs-external and internal-and you could have a lot of exterior maintenance to do. You will need to cover all the home and contents insurance and your rates will likely be higher than they would be in an apartment.
On the plus side, you should find that your property is increasing in value faster over time and you may even be able to set up secondary housing in the
garden or add to the house if you need more space as your family grows.
3-Small and close to the city, or larger and further away far away?
Your next consideration will probably be where you want to live.
In general, first-time home buyers are looking for smaller properties closer to the center, or larger places further in the suburbs, or even further. As an extreme example, at some point recently, prices aligned perfectly, so that a three-bedroom house I knew in Birkenhead, on the North coast of Auckland, sold for exactly the same price as a 10 acre lifestyle block 30 minutes south from Whangarei.
There are obvious advantages and disadvantages in most of these situations and what makes the best home for you will depend a lot on how you live. I know first-time home buyers who lived happily on Auckland’s west coast beaches and would happily have stayed that way, working from home, except they started to feel the commute to take their kids to town for school and extracurricular activities.
If you have children, you might appreciate the prospect of a back garden for them run enough to handle a slightly longer than normal commute. If you work from home, it might be wise to base yourself a little further city to make the most of your flexibility and get more home for your money.
But if you have to go to the office every day, or if you need to pass by like a flash city regularly, it may be a good idea to minimize your travel expenses and buy as close to the center of the city as you can afford.
It is difficult to say which will be the best long-term investment. In General,
properties near city centers are increasing in value in larger quantities than those who are further away. But the higher density properties do not always have the same
growth and if you buy in an area where development is taking off and there is a lot of infrastructure planned, you might find that your house is quickly starting to worth much more.