Find Your Property with a Sense of Purpose

Finding the best property to suit you requires plannning and due diligence, follow these points as a starting point to a successful search and purchase.

Identify your real estate purchase criteria

Knowing you want to buy some real estate of your own is a great start, but don’t start buying until you know exactly what type of property you want.

You must take the time out to sit down and address your must have physical qualities of the property, its location and of course your spending limit.

As you inspect more property and develop a greater understanding of the market you can begin to fine tune and adjust your criteria or spending limits.

By the time you are ready to purchase you should feel like an expert in the small section of the market you have identified your property is in.

If you don’t identify an exact set of criteria for your real estate purchase you will find the whole exercise a very confusing and daunting activity. And it can lead to a poor purchase decision.

Make adequate comparable property assessments

If you are not using a professional buyer advocate to assist with your purchase you must look at more than just a couple of property's that meet your search criteria.

You must make sure you get out there and see many property's but you must also make sure that you are looking at truly comparable property's.

A 2 bedroom 1930’s art deco apartment can not be compared to a 3 year old modern apartment of similar size; they have very different construction qualities and different market appeal.

You must stick with making comparisons between proeprty's that have similar construction qualities, are in a similar quality of neighbourhood and are of a similar size.

Investigate building condition

Don’t forget that buying a property requires your assessment not just of the real estate itself but you will also need to take a visual inspection of the building quality. As you narrow your choice you would be well advised to seek a building and or termite inspection preference should be given to local pest and building inspectors

When buying an apartment, identify owners corporation maintenance programs

The majority of apartments are run by professionally organised owner corporation managers. Their role is to see that they represent the majority of the owners in all matters relating to the owners corporation act see www.consumer.vic.gov.au go to the 'buying and selling property' section for further information.

Their role also includes managing all matters relating to the ownership of common interests, this typically includes all shared maintenance, administration of shared bills (building insurance, security lighting etc) and planning for building improvements.

By contacting the owners corporation manager and reviewing past AGM minutes you can begin to determine the problems of the building that have been discussed in the past and the improvements that are scheduled to be made in the future.