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Things Not to Do Before Purchasing a Home
No Major Purchase of Any Kind
"Don’t Buy a Car," and apply it to any major purchase that would create debt of any kind. This includes furniture, appliances, electronic equipment, jewelry, vacations, expensive weddings…
…and automobiles, of course.
Don’t Move Money Around
When a lender reviews your loan package for approval, one of the things they are concerned about is the source of funds for your down payment and closing costs. Most likely, you will be asked to provide statements for the last two or three months on any of your liquid assets. This includes checking accounts, savings accounts, money market funds, certificates of deposit, stock statements, mutual funds, and even your company 401K and retirement accounts.
If you have been moving money between accounts during that time, there may be large deposits and withdrawals in some of them.
The mortgage underwriter (the person who actually approves your loan) will probably require a complete paper trail of all the withdrawals and deposits. You may be required to produce cancelled checks, deposit receipts, and other seemingly inconsequential data, which could get quite tedious.
Perhaps you become exasperated at your lender, but they are only doing their job correctly. To ensure quality control and eliminate potential fraud, it is a requirement on most loans to completely document the source of all funds. Moving your money around, even if you are consolidating your funds to make it "easier," could make it more difficult for the lender to properly document.
So leave your money where it is until you talk to a loan officer.
Oh…don’t change banks, either. |
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Home, cheap home
Despite new laws, it's still possible to build your own home for less than the price of a suburban building block. Peter Ellingsen reports.
For an increasing number of determined people, the Australian dream is not just owning your own home. It is building it. This seems especially true in Victoria, where one in five of the $7.9 billion worth of domestic building jobs is done by ownerbuilders.
But everything is not as it seems. About three-quarters of the $1.8 billion in building work attributed to owner-builders is being done by building professionals trying to dodge insurance and other costs. It is a loophole that the State Building Commission is now seeking to close with new rules limiting owner-builders to one permit every five years.
The crackdown, due to start next year, is expected to slow down, if not stop, the many speculative builders who hide under the tag ownerbuilder, and account for about $1.2 billion worth of new homes and renovations each year.
But the change should not impede the genuine amateurs who each year decide to build their own homes. Precise numbers are not available, but industry sources estimate that about 2000 of the 35,000 detached homes, and 1500 of the 30,000 renovations done in Victoria are due to people learning as they go.
Many, such as Melbourne journalist, Murray Johnson, do not have any building experience, but manage to erect impressive homes. Johnson, 45, began his mud brick house when spiralling Melbourne house prices ruled him out of the market at the end of the 1990s. With little money after a divorce, he drew up rough plans on the back of an envelope, and began scrounging the timber and other materials needed for a three-bedroom home.
With his new partner, it took four years of weekend work, but now the house, 80 minutes north of Melbourne, is finished. It is inspired by the shearing sheds of rural Australia, and cost about $130,000, about half what a builder would charge.
The price would have been even less if Johnson and his partner had done all the work themselves. While they laid the mud bricks, they did not make them. It was, however, an arduous and demanding undertaking. Lifting 1000 25-kilogram mud bricks into place and washing wheelbarrows late on freezing Sunday evenings was no picnic. “I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone with a shaky relationship,” Johnson says. “But it was one of the best things I’ve ever done. We just look at each other, look at the house and think, ‘We’ve done it’.”
They are not the only ones. What Johnson calls the “backpackers” of the building industry now account for about $600 million worth of houses. It is a big change from the 1960s when hippies, inspired by the mud brick pioneer, Alistair Knox, moved out of town to fashion their own hand-built homes. Then building your own place was a fringe activity. Now, much of what that grassroots group advocated — solar power, water conservation, recycling — is so mainstream it is either the law, or subsidised by government.
Margery Wiltshire in her home, with her husband's artwork hanging on the wall.
Picture: Neil Newitt
Brendan O’Leary and Catherine Upcher, for instance, got State Government subsidies for the solar panels they installed in their stunning stone house at Kancoona, near Beechworth, three-and-a-half hours north of Melbourne. The three panels on the roof keep heating costs down, while a mini-hydro system they have in a nearby creek generates enough electricity to make them power self-sufficient.
They bake their own bread, grow most of their own vegetables and recycle the run-off from their septic tank to the grape vines in the garden. It means their living costs are a fraction of what they would be in the city. But this couple are not camping out. Nestled into the foothills of the Great Dividing Range, their two-storey, 22-square, patiently crafted home is a piece of art.
Like all art it took time — seven years to be exact — to create. Neither O’Leary, 49, nor Upcher, 55, were builders. He was a ski instructor and she worked in community housing when they put a $100 deposit on 4.5 hectares of land in 1983.
The first few years they lived on their savings in a shed with no electricity. It was a big change from Elwood, where they had been, and there were times, when Upcher, now CEO of a rural housing network, was worn down. But not O’Leary. The only thing he had ever built was a chook pen, but when it got tough, he would just go skiing, or join Upcher for a drink. “We didn’t rush it,” he says. “If we’d had the money we could have built it in three years, but the quality would not have been there. I’ve never been an A to B sort of person.” |
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Get Organised
Whether it’s just to relax or entertain friends, we all want the perfect home. A perfect home projects space, comfort and our personal taste. There is nothing like the pride we feel when our family or friends drop in and our home looks like a page from Vogue Living. The reality, of course, is far from perfection. Most people become emotionally attached to everything in their home. So instead of throwing things out they get stored into the spare room or at the back of the closet. Soon we can’t find the things we need, and forget about the things we have. With limited storage, especially in the Eastern Suburbs area, clutter starts to spill over into our living space. Soon that relaxing afternoon when you planned to entertain your friends turns into a cleaning frenzy.
After a long working week few have the motivation and energy to start the overwhelming task of de-cluttering and re-organising. Often those who embark on the challenge find they lack the expertise to maximise their storage area. They spend a lot of time and money buying storage products that don’t fit and simply don’t do the job intended.
Today, busy working people are turning to experts to help them maximise their leisure time and improve their standard of living.
Organise That was created to achieve just that. Each day, despite your hectic life, we want you to feel like your home is a sanctuary, where daily tasks are executed with ease and efficiency so there is plenty of time for the things that matter most to you.
Whether it’s setting up a professional home office or re-organising a closet, the basic needs are the same: to designate an appropriate place for all items, improve efficiency, maximise space, create beauty and comfort. Often the right storage product is the key. With professional advice, in-house demonstration and large product selection there is no more stress or guess work.
It’s a complete solution to an amazing home transformation. |
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