Questions worth asking early
The mortgage is not the whole cost.
The accounting side is announced and not open, so there is nothing here to sell you. What this page has instead is the list of costs people forget until the first bill lands.
Questions worth asking before you sign
Not a service. A list we go through with people at the table.
First
What is the real monthly figure?
The repayment, plus rates, plus water, plus insurance, plus any owners corporation fee, spread across the year. Write it down as one number and live with it for a week before you decide anything.
Then the hard one
What happens if one income stops?
A baby, a redundancy, a bad year. It is an uncomfortable question and it is the one that decides whether the house stays a home or turns into a problem. Ask it while you still have a choice.
If you’re buying to rent it out
Who is handling the tax side?
An investment property changes what you declare and what you can claim, and it keeps changing for every year you hold it. That is a conversation with an accountant, and it belongs before the purchase, not the following June.
Before you commit
What have you forgotten?
The move itself. The first set of curtains. Whether the fridge fits through the door. Small things, except that they all land in the same month, and they are the ones nobody puts in the budget.
The bills that start once the keys are yours.
Council rates, water, building insurance, and contents if you want it. If it is a townhouse there is likely an owners corporation with an annual fee and rules of its own. If you have borrowed against a small deposit there may be a one-off insurance premium that protects the lender rather than you. Then the dull category: a hot water service dies, a fence goes over, the driveway needs doing.
None of that is a reason not to buy. It is a reason to know the real monthly figure before you sign, rather than the one the loan calculator showed you. We ask people to write the whole list out. Most of the time the house still works, and sometimes it does not, which is far better to find out at a table than in the third month.
Before you ask
Are you accountants?
No, and this page is not an accounting service pretending to be one. We have announced it. Until it exists, what you get from us is the list of questions and honest arithmetic at the kitchen table.
Can you tell me if I can afford this house?
We can help you build the real figure. Carrying it is your call, though if we think the answer is no, you will hear us say it.
What about the grant and the stamp duty concession?
Both are real and both move. We sit down and check the current figures with you against your own situation, because a number somebody typed onto a website last year is worth nothing to you.
When will the accounting side open?
We are not going to give you a date we can’t keep. When it is running, this page will say so and it will read very differently.
We would rather talk you out of a house you can’t hold than sell it to you.
Where we are with it
- Our own accounting
- Announced, not yet open
- What this page is
- Questions, not advice
- Languages
- Hazargi, English and Urdu
- Who to call
- Ali on 0448 414 786
More in what we do
The other two announced practices sit alongside this one, and the rest of these pages describe work we do today.
Sit down with the real number.
Write down what comes in, what you have saved and what you still owe. Then we will work out the real figure together, and tell you honestly what it means.
Call Ali on 0448 414 786