A lot of you prospective first-home buyers out there might be spending a fair chunk of your weekends researching the property market and looking at display homes across Sydney. And that’s the way it usually goes with anybody’s first dive into the world of real estate. The impulse to absorb as much knowledge as possible before speaking with any estate agents is perfectly natural and actually encouraged, so long as you know what to be looking out for. Here’s what you’ll need to know to be sure to get the most out of your display home visits.
Location scouting
A lot of display homes are found on Sydney’s outskirts, and it’s safe to say that some suburbs are definitely more liveable – and thus preferable – to others when it comes to looking for your first home or even an investment property, for all you budding investors out there. Location is everything in real estate, and if you’ve been able to thoroughly research the area surrounding each display home (as well as that area’s projected growth over the next decade), you should be able to ascertain roughly how much the value of your home should increase as time goes by. However, it’s not just about money, it’s also about ensuring that your quality of life as a family will be guaranteed.
You’ll want to make sure that your new home is easily accessible by public transport, and is also a reasonable distance from other public amenities like schools, parks, shopping centres, libraries, and the like. Whilst any well-organised display home should boast brochures with information on the suburbs surrounding these new estates, it’s still worthwhile doing your own research online and going for a preliminary drive around the area, just to see if you can picture yourself enjoying life out there for the foreseeable future.
Sizing options
You’ll need to keep in mind that any single display home isn’t actually a perfect example of the floor plan that it’s supposed to be modelling. Established building agencies generally offer flexible floor plans that are made to suit a fixed range of plot sizes, as they understand that plots themselves can come in an array of dimensions. If you’ve fallen in love with a singular floor plan but feel that the plan itself might not be totally suited to your needs (or possibly the future needs of your growing family), it’s worth having an in-depth conversation with your builder regarding the plan’s sizing options. Given that it’s generally cheaper to rebuild homes than renovate them, you can guarantee that it will be a lot cheaper for you, in the long run, to build larger from the get-go than to rebuild or renovate at all.
Environmental factors
Finally, it’s also worth paying attention to the environmental factors surrounding the display homes you’ll be visiting, and this isn’t just referring to the state of the front and back gardens. It’s worth paying attention to factors like insulation, altitude, the materials used to build the home, the carbon footprint of the home as a whole, and the orientation of the building, or what rooms are receiving direct and indirect sunlight.
It’s also worth noting that soil quality can be quite poor in freshly-made suburbs, primarily due to soil compaction from rapid development. This is largely unavoidable, but smart developers know how to mitigate the negative impacts of development and help your soil naturally bounce back. This is why you’ll see a lot of native shrubs and other drought-tolerant plants in the front yards of display homes. These plants have resilient root systems that will help soften layers and layers of soil as they continue to grow. But soil compaction might not be the only issue plaguing your soil! For this reason, it’s recommended that you get a soil test done on any plot you’re seriously considering building on.
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If you’ve been able to follow this small guide to a tee, chances are high you’re well on the way to building your future home on a strong foundation of knowledge and preparedness.