I signed my first mortgage at 27 and spent the next three years finding out how much I didn’t know. The house was fine. The process was the problem. Nobody warned me that an inspection report doubles as a negotiation tool, or that a lender’s maximum approval has nothing to do with what’s affordable.
There’s a longer list of things I wish I knew before buying my first house: the surprises, the small print, the details that only surface at 2am. This is different. This is the order to do things in, with real numbers attached.
Ten steps. Roughly three months. About $9,000 in fees sitting on top of your deposit. Here’s how it actually goes.
Step 1: Nail Down What You Can Actually Afford
Before you open a single listing, work out the monthly number. Not the purchase price. The monthly number.
A $280,000 house with 10% down at a 6.8% rate puts you near $1,830 in principal and interest. Then add property tax (about $290 a month in my county), homeowners insurance ($115), mortgage insurance because you’re under 20% down ($97), and HOA fees if there are any. That’s $2,377 before you’ve fixed a thing.
Now budget 1% of the purchase price a year for maintenance, so another $230 a month. You’re at $2,600. I was approved for $340,000, and buying at the top of that range would have left me $400 a month of breathing room. Doing that in a house I “could afford” would have felt like being broke with extra steps.
The 30% Rule Is a Rough Guide, Not a Rule
Housing at 30% of gross income is what lenders quote. Add a car payment and a student loan and it stops working. I ran mine closer to 26% of take-home, which felt tight for a year and comfortable after that.
Step 2: Get Your Deposit and Paperwork Sorted Six Months Out
There’s the deposit, and then there’s the money on top of the deposit. Closing costs usually land between 2% and 5% of the loan, so on a $250,000 mortgage, plan for $5,000 to $12,000.
Lenders want a paper trail: two months of bank statements, recent payslips, tax returns, and a signed letter from anyone gifting you money confirming it isn’t a loan. I chased my parents for that letter twice. Also, don’t shuffle money between accounts in the 90 days before you apply. Large unexplained deposits slow underwriting down more than almost anything else.
Step 3: Map the Timeline Backwards From Your Move-Out Date
Most people underestimate this by a month. If your lease ends on 30 June and you want to be in by then, you’re starting in March.
The rough shape: four to six weeks to search and make an offer, one to two weeks for inspection and renegotiation, then six to eight weeks for the mortgage and legal work. Call it three to four months, plus a two-week buffer, because something always slips. If you want the stage-by-stage version, the real timeline for buying a house is worth reading before you commit to a date.
Step 4: Research the Street, Not Just the Postcode
Every listing site gives you the neighbourhood. None of them tell you the house backs onto land zoned for apartments, or that the railway 200 metres away is scheduled for freight expansion.
Checks that cost nothing
- Stand outside at 7am and 9pm on a weekday. Traffic, noise, parking, who’s around.
- Search the local planning portal for the street name and read every application.
- Check flood maps and get an insurance quote for that exact address, not the city.
- Drive the commute at rush hour, twice, on two different days.
I skipped the planning portal. A three-storey block of flats was approved behind us eighteen months after we moved in.
Step 5: View Properties Like an Inspector, Not a Buyer
Estate agents work to a script, and the script includes “bright and airy” for anything with a window. Ignore it and look at the building. How to spot a bad house before you buy it goes deep on this, but the short version works like this:
Fresh paint on one wall only usually means damp or a patched crack. A strong smell of bleach often covers pets, damp or drains. Doors that don’t close properly suggest movement in the frame. Look under sinks for water stains and at ceilings for brown rings.
Take a torch. Look in the loft or basement. Ask when the boiler or furnace was last serviced and ask for the paperwork. If there’s no paperwork, assume it needs replacing and price it in.
Step 6: Offer With Data, Not Emotion
The biggest edge you have is comparable sales. Sold prices for similar homes on similar streets in the last six months, not asking prices.
Ask three questions. How long has it been on the market? Over 60 days usually means the price is wrong or something is off. What have comparable homes sold for per square foot? And what will it cost to fix the problems the inspection is going to find?
On my house I offered $12,000 under asking and listed three specific issues from the viewing. They countered at $5,000 under. I accepted, then got a second bite at the price after the inspection, which is the next step.
Step 7: Never Skip the Inspection, and Read the Whole Report
An inspection costs $400 to $700 and it is the best money in the entire process. Mine found $9,000 of roof work and a failing water heater. I sent the report back to the sellers with two contractor quotes and they dropped the price by $6,500.
Read the report properly instead of skimming the summary. The scary-sounding lines about foundation cracks and “further evaluation recommended” matter far less than the boring items nobody photographs: drainage, electrical age, roof life, water. What home inspectors wish every buyer knew before making an offer tells you exactly what to ask for.
Get your own specialist quotes before you renegotiate. A roofer’s written estimate carries more weight than a general inspector’s note.
Step 8: Budget for the Costs Nobody Mentions at the Viewing
I had the deposit. I did not have:
- Survey and valuation fee: $450
- Legal and title fees: $1,600
- Lender arrangement fee: $995
- Moving van and two guys: $600
- Blinds, because every window had bare glass: $700
- A fridge and a washing machine, both of which left with the sellers: $1,400
That’s $5,745 and I hadn’t bought a single stick of furniture. Keep a separate pot for it, ideally $8,000 to $10,000 on a house in this price range, and don’t fund it by draining the emergency fund you’ll need three weeks after moving in.
Step 9: Keep Your Finances Boring Between Offer and Keys
The mortgage is approved in principle, not in fact. Underwriting re-checks everything before completion.
Don’t change jobs, don’t finance a car, don’t open a credit card for the new sofa, and don’t let a balance creep onto your credit file. A colleague had his offer pulled three days before exchange because a $9,000 car loan showed up on his report. He lost the house and $1,200 in legal fees.
Get buildings insurance quoted and bound from the day you exchange, not the day you move in. On most contracts, the risk passes to you at exchange.
Step 10: Expect the First Year to Cost More Than the Mortgage
Year one is when the house tells you what it needs. In my first twelve months: a new water heater ($1,100), a blocked drain and a camera survey ($480), two trees removed before they reached the fence ($900), and a boiler service that turned into a repair ($320). None of it was in the seller’s disclosure. All of it was in my bank statements.
The habit that saved me was a standing transfer of $250 into a house account the day after payday. By month eight I had enough for the water heater without touching a credit card. Set that up before you unpack.
Doing these ten things in this order wouldn’t have made my first purchase effortless. It would have saved me somewhere between $15,000 and $20,000 and most of the sleepless nights. Start with the monthly number, work backwards from your move-out date, and treat every viewing as a survey. That’s the whole game.