A young Aussie has opened up on receiving shocking advice from a mortgage broker that stopped her homeowning dream in its tracks.
Bianca Heaven, 27, has been saving for her first home for years while living at home with her parents and two years ago she decided to start attending inspections around the lower north shore in Sydney.
She had saved up an impressive 10 per cent deposit and felt she was ready to get serious about owning her first property.
Ms Heaven said she believed saving for a deposit was the main financial battle she’d face and assumed she would be approved for a home loan within her mapped out budget.
However, she told news.com.au, she “did the process backwards” and was “looking in the suburbs completely out of my reach”.
After attending several inspections, Ms Heaven, who works in HR and models, spoke with a mortgage broker, whose advice came as a “rude shock”.
She was told she needed to save a 20 per cent deposit as she wouldn’t be able to service the home loan with her current earnings and a 10 per cent deposit.
“I wouldn’t have been able to make the repayments,” she said.
“I was already looking at places before I got financial advice and I got my hopes up.”
Ms Heaven said the mortgage broker’s advice was tough to hear, but instead of giving up she used the words to spur her on and save even more diligently than she had been up until that point.
She admitted that although she had been saving up prior to the advice, she was afforded the luxury of being able to travel and go out for dinner with her friends because she was living at home and not paying rent.
Ms Heaven said she would have been able to buy her first property earlier if she had paid closer attention to her spending, but following the mortgage broker’s advice, she reassessed her expectations and began to look for properties in more affordable neighbourhoods.
The model had wanted her first home to be close to the beach and the city, but ended up buying a one-bedroom apartment in Lidcombe, in Sydney’s greater west, two years after her initial search.
“The one-bedroom places I was looking at were asking upwards of $750,000, and the place I ended up buying was $580,000,” she said.
The original asking price for Ms Heaven’s property was $620,000, but she was able to negotiate with the owners who hadn’t received much interest and were looking to sell quickly.
Ms Heaven admitted servicing a mortgage has been a huge financial adjustment, but she’s thrilled to have the freedom of owning her first home.
