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Hi everyone, welcome to another edition of Homebuyer's School. Today I'm joined
by Bridgette Beaulieu, a area manager with Brookfield Residential, and the topic
we're gonna discuss today is, "what are some tips for first-time homebuyers?" So
Bridgette, what are your tips for first-time homebuyers?
Know your budget, know your lifestyle,
know what home is going to fit that.
Resalability is extremely important, it's
your first home, you're not going to live in
this forever, maybe three, five years.
Know the Builder and know the land
developer because the amenities that
they provide are going to directly impact the value of your home, they're also going
to affect how much you enjoy your life as you live in the home.
Great, well let's take it from the top then,
how about budget? What are some tips from a budget perspective?
Talk to your lender, that's absolutely the first step. You need to
know what you have to work with so I would say find a trusted professional, a
broker, a bank, whichever one you choose and just sit and really speak with
them and just understand where you are financially and what you have to work with.
Okay, and that could be like any bank or any mortgage broker right?
Well a trusted professional. We do have-- just with the way the mortgage rules have
changed, it is good to seek advice from reputable sources of course, so yeah.
Well how about the second one, when we talk about lifestyle, what is--what are
your tips on the lifestyle or knowing your lifestyle when it's--when
you're buying a home?
Well everyone knows their lifestyle, you live your lifestyle
so just understand the area and understand how your lifestyle is going
to fit there. So if you love to jog perhaps don't look in a highly urbanized
area without any trails, without any amenities like that. Just know yourself
and that where you go to live is going to to meet your needs.
Another example would be if you have a
dog and you probably want to find a place that's
close to a dog park right.
Yeah, you can just walk there versus putting them in
your car, driving there, coming back full of mud and yeah.
That's right, that's right. So we talked about budget, we talked about
lifestyle, now we want to talk about resalability. So what are the
tips for first-time homebuyers you have for reselling your house?
Purchase a home that will appeal to the largest demographic when it comes time
to sell. An example of this is if you're kind of on the fence, you're not sure--"do
I want two beds, do I want three beds?" You're not exactly sure, perhaps
going with the three bed would be a good choice because when you go to resale
this will appeal to more more groups.
And what are your thoughts about renovation?
So for example, if I wanted to renovate a three bedroom and turn it into two
bedroom, expand one bedroom into a bigger bedroom, or change the way the
kitchen looks, what are your thoughts about renovations?
I don't believe it's a good
idea to renovate a brand new home. You're buying new so that large type of
renovation shouldn't be a necessity, if you've purchased the home that's right
for you. The other thing to consider with that is that renovations can void
certain parts of warranties and you want to maintain that warranty because it
will transfer with the home. When you do go to sell your house you
want to have as much of that transfer with the home as you can, it's the
benefit to your new homebuyer.
And if you've done all these renovations you've
kind of voided the warranty and that's something that you can't really offer to
someone who wants to buy it.
Exactly.
Great. I think the last one though that
you mentioned was being able to research
the developer and the home builder so let's take a look at the developer first,
why is that an important thing to know who the developer of your property is?
Because that will determine the community that you live in, it will
determine amenities, park spaces, how well they're built, how well they are
maintained and that all of those things affect the value of your home.
If a developer is very functional, they just want to get as many homes as they can
on a street, versus someone that cares about green spaces, cares about
amenities, cares about that--the social spaces that are outside of your home,
all of those things come into play.
Okay, and why would you want to research the Builder?
You want to ensure you have a well-built home, you want to ensure that
after you buy your home if anything does come up they're there, that they will
take care of you. The other thing too is when you approach a show home,
look at the roof lines before you even go through the door. The pitches are
architectural aspects that does show. They understand the value of your home,
they understand what retains value and if they put this much effort
into these aspects on the outside of your home that, also speaks to what
they'll do inside your home. It also speaks to the care that they take in
their work and how they approach what they do.
So it's more of like the really fine details especially looking at the financials of
what's included in your house.
Exactly.
They understand what they do.
So when you talk about roof lines, how do you know I guess--if it's good or not?
Well, it appeals to the eye, and then there are different slopes and
pitches that are not difficult to build, and then
they can come in a much tighter incline, this takes a lot more effort,
takes a lot more work, it looks a lot nicer and then you can also fit
multiple pitches, different architectural aspects. I know I've gone
down the street sometimes and I've been able to count every fourth house has the
same roof, every third house has this door,
but then if you're going down a street where it's all blended, it's all
different and everything looks a bit more unique, that's what I mean.
So when you're walking down the street and you see kind of a cookie cutter
approach versus what you were talking about steeper, I guess--pitches?
That tells you that the builders more--is really into the details right? Is to
understand--really focus on the details of the home right?
Yes and that they understand value.
That's really important. They don't just want to build this home, get it out and go
on to the next.
Okay, well thank you very much everyone for joining us and we'll catch
you next time.
That's another edition of
Homebuyer's School. Tune in next time
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