To reside in Noosa is a dream. The lifestyle that many crave and few wish to leave involves waking up to birds singing, having weekend trips to Main Beach, and wandering into the deep green trails of the National Park. If you are renting here, you should know about the magic. Perhaps with all the routine inspections and lease renewals happening, your inner voice might be getting louder: “How do I even go about owning a piece of this paradise?”
While this is a very common dream, the road from tenant to titleholder currently feels shrouded in mystery. How long does it really take? Is it a mad dash or a slow, unrelenting marathon? In truth, it is a journey with particular stages, and understanding these is what gets your dream of homeownership as close to reality as possible. Let us peel back the layers to set out a feasible timeline towards making Noosa your forever home and not just a temporary address.
Before the Hunt: Preparation Is of the Utmost Importance
This stage is the veritable longest and arises mostly from within the individual. Think of this stage as standing for the foundation before the house goes up, the more prepared you are, the smoother the rest of the process will be. For most people the preparation phase can take anywhere from about two to five years, sometimes even longer.
The financial side is the very first concern. Instead of the usual 20% deposit to avoid Lenders Mortgage Insurance (LMI) that you may have heard about, there are smaller deposits possible, so have a look around.
Building your financial profile also goes on in the background while you are actively saving. This would mean demonstrating to the lenders that you:
- Consistently save
- Pay all your bills on time
- Pay off the balance of other debts such as credit cards or car loans honestly, or are in the process of paying it down
The lenders want to see you as stable and reliable. In the highly competitive Noosa rental market, motivation is a must in this phase. It will be easier to turn the dollars spent on rent into a disciplined savings plan with the knowledge that you are working toward the purchase of your own place, whether you want it or not!
You may also want to start some preliminary talk with a mortgage broker now. They will give you an idea of what you may borrow, set a defined target for saving to get there, and take a somewhat vague dream and put it into some concrete numbers.
The Exciting Part: The Actual Search and Purchase of a Home
With the deposit in the bag, the focus turns to fulfilling your active search for a property. Here starts the journey to serious territory, and this phase may take from weeks to several months.
Before you can scour property listings for the first time, you must get a mortgage pre-approval confirmed. A mortgage pre-approval entails a letter from a lender that states they are willing to lend to you a certain amount of money, subject to conditions. In a place like Noosa, pre-approval would not just be granted but would be very strongly recommended. It is a pre-approval that transforms you from a window shopper to a serious contender. When you see that right property, indeed you will not need to waste a second.
Once the pre-approval is obtained, the actual fun begins, hopefully finding the home of your dreams. Attending open homes, meeting several agents, and getting down to work with yourself and selling agents to really understand what you want in a property is what you will be doing. This phase requires patience, though. You probably will not find that one perfect property on the first weekend out.
On your property search, however, when you do find the one, it is time to put in an offer. The offer will have some conditions attached to it, which are usually:
- ‘subject to finance’
- ‘subject to a building and pest inspection.’
These conditions are very important safety nets, as they allow you to fully withdraw the offer should you not obtain financing or if the property is found to have substantial issues concealed from view. After the offer is accepted, the contract is signed by both parties; you are ready for the last leg of the journey.
The Final Countdown: Getting Through the Settlement Phase
I now come to the final and binding phase of your journey: where all the legalities and finances come together. The settlement period here in Queensland is customarily anywhere between thirty and sixty days, although that can be negotiated. This period starts immediately upon the signing of the contract.
After your contract is signed, it is forwarded to the lender for final sign-off. Even if you have a mortgage pre-approval, your lender will perform their own valuation of the property to be sure it is worth the amount you want to borrow. The formal home loan approval time can vary depending on the lender and the complexity of your file, but having all your documents prepared in advance will help speed this along significantly. It can seem nerve-wracking to wait, but it is all just standard.
While the bank continues to do your loan, the conveyancer or solicitor will be hard at work for you. Title searches will be conducted, negotiations will take place with the vendor’s solicitor, and those all-important transfer documents will be drawn up. You want to be arranging your building and pest inspections at this time too.
Assuming finance is unconditional and the inspection reports are clean, the process moves towards settlement day, with a little pre-settlement inspection just before the day itself to make sure the property is just as you found it on the day the contract was signed. On settlement day, the lender pays the seller, and the title is transferred into your name with a very excited call from your conveyancer saying, “Congratulations, the property is yours. Bring your boxes!”
Your Noosa Dream Is Closer Than You Could Imagine
The transition from renting to ownership is a really big time in anyone’s life, and so in a place as special as Noosa, it is a worthy journey to embark on. As discussed, the timeline is a long-term savings marathon, many years in the making, immediately handed off to a focused search process, almost a few months, and finally a short settlement finale, which lasts from one to two months.
It truly takes a lot of planning, a great deal of patience, and uncompromising persistence, yet one could argue that it is not at all far away or close to impossible. The process breaks down into stages easy enough to comprehend; the road becomes lighter to see, and the destination more bearable. Unlocking your front door for the very first time will be a feeling that will be forever etched in your memory, knowing that you have just grabbed hold of something for yourself that will be your future in this beautiful community.
