House hunters getting lateral
Granny at the back and co-living are ways first-time buyers can navigate the home buying minefield.
INVESTOR Partner Group’s Moxin Reza says there are left-field ideas to help first home buyers get a foothold.
The founder of the firm that assists clients to build scalable and sustainable property portfolios suggests creating a “money pool with family to enter into the market” can be a strategy that works.
This can involve the “’granny at the back’ approach where you buy a house with granny and live in the main house or granny and rent the other half,” he says.
Alternately, there’s the “co-living route where you live in a portion of the house and rent other rooms”.
Reza’s tips fit with latest data from Proptrack, the Victoria-based analytics company, which identifies that first home buyers are thinking more out of the box on property, including on location, at present.
For instance, Proptrack’s analysis shows that, in Queensland, the Brisbane fringe suburb of Greenbank now ranks high with first home buyers. The median house price in Greenbank is $837,000, far cheaper than Brisbane’s inner areas.
Across the border, Sydney house hunters are looking even further away from their CBD, to Marsden Park, situated 50 kilometres northwest of the city’s central business district.
In Marsden Park, the median house price sits at $985,000, which is relatively affordable for first-home buyers in Sydney. The city’s median house price recently reached a record $1.65 million, according to Domain.
Further south, Proptrack points to the Melbourne suburb of Tarneit, about 30 kilometres west of the CBD, as a standout for first home buyers. Here, the median house price is $650,000, far below the over $1 million average for a two-bedder in the inner suburbs.
