Sharona Ghaemmaghami bought 26 and 26A Herrick St, Blacktown, which is a three-bedroom house and a two-bedroom granny flat.
In this series, The Australian Financial Review chats to a recent home buyer about where they bought and why – as well as the practical details, such as how much the property cost, whether they got what they wanted, and just how hard (or easy) the process was – to give readers a taste of what the market is like.
Meet Sharona Ghaemmaghami, 25, who has bought her first property with her 30-year-old boyfriend.
Tell us a little about yourself
I am an operations manager and my boyfriend is an engineer. I still live separately from my boyfriend – I live with my mum in Sydney’s north-west. But we thought it was a good idea to take the next step and get a place together.
We have been together for three and a half years.
What did you initially want?
In February last year, my boyfriend and I started looking for a house more seriously. We wanted a freestanding house with a granny flat because of the yield. We also wanted to buy in the Blacktown area just because we believe it will be a suburb with a lot of growth as it’s been very popular in the past few years.
What was the process like?
Given the current prices and interest rates, we just knew that saving a 20 per cent deposit was going to be almost impossible. But buying a home with a 12 per cent deposit while paying lenders mortgage insurance gave us a good alternative. Otherwise, we would have to wait a few years, but then we would be out of the market by then because of housing prices going up.
So we just knew that we had enough income for us to pay a 12 per cent deposit and LMI, which would get us through the door in buying a home priced up to $1.2 million.
What did you end up buying?
We bought a house in Blacktown, in Sydney’s west, for $1.15 million in April last year. This amounted to us paying about $20,000 in LMI. The property is now being used as an investment property, where we are getting a rental yield of 4.8 per cent. It matched what we were looking for, which was being located in our ideal suburb of Blacktown and having a granny flat at the back of the property. That’s exactly what we wanted. The house has three bedrooms and two bathrooms, and the granny flat has two bedrooms and one bathroom. The property doesn’t have a garage, but it has a carport.
After committing to paying the LMI, it was an easy process for us as it gave us a budget to find a house in Blacktown that didn’t need any renovations. The previous owners kept it nice and clean, and they did some recent renovations as well.
What’s the local housing market like?
From what we’ve seen, house prices are still on the rise, even though interest rates have risen. It’s not really slowing down and, for us, we’re just thinking about building our equity up and having enough money to one day buy our dream home. But right now, we know that is out of reach for us – we’re not able to afford anything that’s close to where we would like to live. I’d like for us to live in the Hills, in Sydney’s north-west, but that’s much more expensive than Blacktown.
(Fin Review – July 2024) If you would like assistance with a home loan health check, purchasing property or refinancing, or to discuss any other lending needs, please do not hesitate to contact Geoff.
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