How Roslyn & Jerry Key Purchased a Home in Sydney 8 Years Ahead of Schedule
With a baby on the way, Roslyn and Jerry Key were faced with a common situation a lot of other young families find themselves in across Sydney.
With house prices sitting at record-high levels and the ongoing cost of rent weighing them down, saving money for a house deposit was something that wasn’t happening.
House prices across Sydney have been rising at the fastest rate we’ve seen in many years and pricing many first home buyers out of the market. According to the latest data from CoreLogic, the median house price in Sydney is now $1,061,229 and that number grew by 3.0% in the last month alone which is an increase of more than $1,000 per day.
By their own calculations, it would have been nearly a decade before they could afford to buy their own home even though they were both in well-paid jobs. This is a common story, with most first home buyers in Sydney taking 8.2 years to save for a deposit according to Bankwest.
Roslyn had moved to Australia from Scotland and was working in her dream job as a physio for an NRL team. While Jerry, originally from New Zealand, was also happily settled in Australia but wanted to get into a home of his own and stop renting.
The young family had originally thought about buying elsewhere and they weren’t really sure what they should do to get onto the property ladder.
“We originally were thinking about buying an investment property in Queensland and it just never really came to fruition.”
“We were umming and ahhing about what to do when Jerry’s mum sent us an ad for Home First. It was the same one I’d seen on social media as well.”
“We had a closer look at it by still felt that it seemed too good to be true. In the end, we said to ourselves, what’s the harm in looking and applying for it? So we decided we’d just bite the bullet and do it. Thankfully we did.”
Roslyn and Jerry wanted to buy a house in the Riverstone area of Sydney, but with the median house price at nearly $800,000, coming up with a $160,000 deposit was simply out of reach.
With Home First’s help, Roslyn and Jerry were not only able to get into their dream home, but they did so with very little out of pocket expenses.
“We’re in a four-bedroom townhouse on a big corner block with a nice big back yard. We’ve got three bathrooms, there’s so much space. It’s just so nice.”
“And it’s something that if we didn’t apply to Home First we would never have been able to afford. It would have taken us a long, long time to try and get there.”
Home First was able to help Roslyn and Jerry secure a loan based on their steady incomes and also helped provide them with the deposit they needed.
“You put down a small amount of money at the start and you just pay for the lawyer’s fees, and the kind of regular costs that happen at settlement.”
“I think all up it would have been probably about $15,000 we would have been out of pocket to get a home a home of our own in Sydney.”
“Apart from the fact that they absolutely got us into a home, it saved us so much money because at the time there was no stamp duty so we saved on both stamp duty and lender’s mortgage insurance.”
Applying to Home First has been a life-changing experience for Roslyn and Jerry and it’s made their dream of owning a home a reality.
“The way that the housing market’s going, it’s just exploding, so in reality, we probably wouldn’t have gotten into the housing market for five to seven years if we didn’t get in now.”
Home First is a unique program that gives aspiring buyers the opportunity to enter the Sydney property market years sooner than would otherwise be possible.
Home First helps first home buyers purchase their own home by filling the gap between the savings you have now and the amount you need to buy today. As long as you are able to secure the home loan, you can get into the property market with as little as a $5,000 deposit.