Purchasing your first property will probably be the largest financial commitment you will ever have made. However, looking for the right place can often be time-consuming, expensive if you need to take unpaid time off from work and often extremely frustrating. On top of all the emotional turmoil you have to go through you also have to be aware of gazumping as well as rogue estate agents.

Making sure you have the right information when looking for a property can help in making the process considerably smoother.

The amount of money you will be able to borrow depends on what you can agree with your lender and it can be a good idea to check out home loans before you start looking to ensure you are searching in the right price bracket.

Traditionally the figure has been up to three and-a-half times the main earner’s income before tax. On top of that you can also borrow up to one times the amount of any secondary earner in the household. An alternative to this is borrowing two and an half times the joint income of the two earners combined if this is larger than the amount of the two separate earners.
However many lenders have started to turn away from these income multiples in favour of affordability measures. These take into account other debt you might have as well as if you have children or not. However this also means they consider what you might be able to earn in the future.

When agreeing to a loan be very aware that interest rates can go up or down and this can change how much your monthly repayments are considerably. Many people on two year fixed rate deals are fast learning how a much a change in interest rates can really affect your mortgage repayments when a good rate ends and is replaced by a much higher one.