7 July 2021
First Time Buyer
Buying Your First Home: Top Tips To Make The Process As Easy As Possible
For many people, especially young people, the thought of buying a home is a far-off dream. But when you make the right decisions early on in the process, it can be a lot easier than you may think.
When buying your first home, there’s a lot to think about: you may be changing jobs, moving closer to or further away from family, buying new furniture, and adjusting to a new way of living. That’s to say nothing of the home buying process itself, as well as getting used to a brand new community.
So, how do you make buying a new home as easy as possible?
Build a good team
Ronan McKenna is the Sales Director at Glenveagh. “I've dealt with an awful lot of first-time buyers and guided them through that journey,” he says. “And every journey is different. What’s more apparent than anything is that the difficulties that people experience are easy to overcome once you pick the right team to have around you.”
When you’re new to the home buying process, there are many procedures and routines which can seem overwhelming. This, Ronan explains, is why it’s essential to gather around yourself professionals who not only know what they’re doing but who you can communicate with clarity and who have your best interests in mind.
“Things like getting your mortgage approval in place,” he says. “It’s all easier when you’re with the right broker or dealing with the right person in the bank.”
And Glenveagh is more than happy to help. With years of experience in the property industry, they’ve coached thousands of first-time homebuyers and built up those relationships and a network of contacts which can make all the difference.
“What we've found,” Ronan continues, “is that those who engage a solicitor very early in the process get the benefit of the solicitor's experience in choosing the home as well as doing the conveyance.”
So, by putting your solicitor in place as early as you can, you actually get a lot more value for money than you otherwise might.
The snag list - what is it, and why do you need one?
A snag list is a term used in the property industry to describe small faults in a building that has recently been completed. Once a home has been built, you should get a qualified surveyor to visit the property to check that all of the items on the snag list have been properly dealt with.
Did you know what a snag list was? Many new homebuyers don’t - and because of this, many of them pay the price.
“Some people find it very daunting, they think they have to know all about construction in order to produce a snag list,” Ronan says. “You can make one yourself, or if you employ a professional they'll do a good job for you and you won't be sitting in your home afterwards and saying, ‘oh, I should have seen that’.”
Homebuyers Sam Gormley and Hannah White were advised to get a snag list done, and because they were early in doing so managed to fix a couple of issues before moving in.
“You don’t get that with an older property,” says Sam. “When we bought a new house we could move in right away, and there weren’t too many snags. It was perfect.”
When you buy a new build house via a large home builder such as Glenveagh, you’re not just paying for a property. You’re tapping a vein of experience in the property industry which reaches back decades, and you have access to friendly professionals who are experts in dealing with solicitors, mortgage lenders, and more But by implementing a few critical steps early in the process, such as getting a solicitor on board as quickly as possible and applying for help to buy as soon as you can, your dream of getting that new home has never been so within reach.
