Article by Tom Clendon
Purchasing a home in New Zealand is a difficult experience regardless of which stage in life you are at. There is however a variety of different things you can do to make it easier on yourself.
Finding your house is the first step! I recommend going to a few open homes in the suburbs you are interested in and build a network of the real estate agents who work in the area. Talk to them at the open home, and if they seem reliable and you are comfortable dealing with them, give them a list of what you are looking for in your new house. Make the list as accurate and detailed as you can. They will then do all the hard work for you, looking for properties that may suit your needs. This will give you and extra pair of eyes much closer to the action than your own. Agents will always be the first people to find out about new houses coming onto the market, and can often give you an advantage with their knowledge and experience.
Once your house has been found, getting the finances sorted becomes key. The best opportunity you have of getting your mortgage approved is if you have a large enough deposit. Many banks will not be interested in lending to you, no matter how high or stable your salaries may be if you don’t have a big deposit.As well as following all the usual advice on saving for a deposit (cutting back on the lattes, ditching the takeaways), In New Zealand, we luckily have an option to get government help when getting a deposit together for a first house. That is the KiwiSaver First Home subsidy. If you have been contributing to your KiwiSaver fund for 3 years or more, you are entitled to 00 for every year you have been in KiwiSaver, up to a maximum of 00.
That is, if you’ve been contributing to KiwiSaver for 3 years, when you buy your first house, you can withdraw all your and your employees’ contributions, plus the government (Via Housing New Zealand) will chip in with an extra 00 , paid directly to your Lawyer on settlement day.
So in the best case scenario, if both you and your partner have been contributing your to KiwiSaver funds for 5 years or more, you are both entitled to an extra 00 each, for a total of ,000 extra cash towards your new house! If the house you want to buy costs 0,000, this subsidy could be up to a third deposit, a huge help to anyone, and something that should make your dream of owning your own home that much closer!
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For more details you can check out the website http://www.kiwisaverfacts.co.nz, the #1 source for KiwiSaver information.