Home Sweet Home...

This weekend, again, my good friend will be loitering around Melbourne suburbs with her hubby to search for the hopeful candidates of what they would like to call 'HOME.' I myself had experienced the pain and suffering that she goes through right now to find the perfect home.

In a nutshell, you can think that home is just like other goods such as, shoes, bags, etc. You find what you like, pay it with cash (if you're rich enough) or credit card (if your have a bottomless pitt credit limit) or loan (like other normal people). The only difference is that once you got the house, it'll be your HOME, and you'll be stuck with it for a long time, if not forever. So, when you factor in this difference, it becomes totally another different story. My friend said that it's so hard to find just the right house and I totally agree with her. What makes it difficult? It always come down to how to find a house that meets the criteria as follow:

1. Budget. This is the far most important factor to consider when you're shopping for a house. You couldn't buy a mansion of 5M dollars worth even if you LOVED it so much, if you can only afford a 500K dollars condo, for example. Budget will determine how much can you fork out to cover for the down payment. It will determine what kind of house do you want to buy. A townhouse, an apartment, or a stand alone house? It will also determine on are you able to pay for the house in the end of the day, regardless of any economic turmoil drama that's been going on nowadays. In conclusion, what you want is not always what you get as illustrated from the example when it comes to the budget.

2. Location. Where do you like your house to be located at. My personal criterias of the perfect house must be: 1. Steps away to the public transport facilities (this depends on which country you live in) 2. Steps away from amenities (all the supermarket, eateries, post office, community centers are included in this) 3. Have a reasonable commuting time from home to office (my idea of reasonable is within 30min to 1hour max). 4. For parents, you definitely want a house in a nice neighborhood with a definitely nice, if not descent, school for the children. So, with these requirements on location alone, it'll take you quite some time to find the house that matches at least 80% of them. And location does make a difference in price and value of the house.

3. Size. Yes, size, after location, matters because it affects housing price. The price for a 3-bedrooms will definitely different from a 2-bedrooms within the same premise. Also, the price for a 1500sq feet 3-bedrooms apartment will be different from a 2000sq feet 3-bedrooms apartment. I prefer a unit with not so big area, so a 2-bedroom will be more than enough for me as I'm still single, yet have a high ceiling.

4. Interior. This is an important aspect, believe it or not, and I discarded lots of home candidates because of this. The latest units come with 2 kitchens, dry and wet. Dry for entertaining your guests with a mini bar counter, wet for your cooking purposes. My personal requirements for this criteria that got me hard time finding a house are: 1. The master bathroom must have a bathtub (yes, I like to relax myself every now and then if I'm stress, I don't care how much water will be wasted to keep me insane) 2. The kitchen must have a built-in oven. I like to bake, though not having done so recently. So this feature is really important as it'll save space for the kitchen. 3. The kitchen must be separated by a door/glass window. This is to keep the smell passing through the living room when I'm cooking 4. For a condo, it must have an inside washing room, so you don't need to hang your clothes outside the window, which is very dangerous most of the time. I have all these requirements because I don't want to renovate my house before I moved in. It defeats the purpose of buying a house with, for example, 500K dollars if you have to fork out another 60K dollars for renovation. So, with all these chirps, this criteria itself will give you enough headaches, let alone considering the other aspects.

5. Loan package. Unless you're paying by cash, as what normal people will do, you'll be worried about this part, together with the budget. This will determine how long you're going to have a long-term commitment financially to pay-off your house. Shopping for loan package is another different story as you have to go bank by bank to know what they're offering. You'll have to choose from several packages ranging from fixed, partial floating, and totally floating interest rate. When you buy the house suddenly become even more important, especially nowadays, because you want to capture the low interest rate. And it's always a better choice to have a fixed interest rate package for your peace of mind. Next, you'll need to decide whether you want to have 20years or 30years loan. The longer the loan, the higher the total interest, but you get a lower monthly payments. You also want to consider how fast you want to pay off the loan by refinancing and top up from some savings that you have.

6. Purpose. Most of people will buy a house for them to live in. But, lots of people also buy houses as a way to diversify their investment. Houses are pricey, but the price trend will be always go up in the end of the day, despite the fluctuation. One may buy a house that he wouldn't want to live in, but he may find other people who want to rent the place, or just resale it when the price is right. More and more people are turning to housing as an investment tool as uncertainties and risks keep increasing lately amidst to the financial crisis.

In conclusion, some people may even have longer lists of criteria that I've mentioned above when they're shopping for houses. The main idea is just to get a place that they could comfortably call 'HOME.'