‘Extremely stressful': Young couple's shock after buying their first home

News.com.au

26-05-2025

When a young Aussie couple bought their first home they were elated, but their excitement quickly turned to stress for one unforeseen reason.
Clare Easton and her partner Logan, both 23, bought their first home together in Newcastle, NSW, last year with a five per cent deposit.
In NSW, the average settlement period for a property is around six weeks, but in their case, it dragged out for a torturous six months.
'When we bought, I was so excited, but when we settled, the process felt like it had been ruined from all the complications and extended wait time,' Ms Easton told news.com.au.
The situation was complicated by the fact the property was a deceased estate and, because they purchased the home over the Christmas period, courts were closed.
There was a lot of paperwork to sort out and even after months of negotiating they had issues the day before settling.
'It became extremely stressful,' she said.
'Our settlement was six months. Crazy right? During the six months it was terrible. At one point we were even given the incorrect settlement date.'
At one point the couple packed everything into boxes and were then told a week out that there'd been a 'miscommunication' and they couldn't move in just yet.
'In hindsight, we were lucky to have this time to save so much extra money, but we had some unexpected car troubles,' she said.
Ms Easton said that the poor communication made the process particularly difficult.
'We were not communicated with for a really long period of time during this and it felt like no one wanted to help us,' she said.
Things also just kept going wrong. During the settlement, her car was hit by a bus, and the engine of her partner's car blew up.
'My car was thankfully able to be fixed with insurance, but Logan's car was going to cost more to fix than it would even sell for,' she explained.
'We also had planned to sell that car for renovations as he has a company car, so that was extremely disappointing for us, but we thankfully had time to work things out.'
One of the reasons the 23-year-old found the process so nailbiting was because of how hard they'd worked to buy.
They'd hustled for over two years to save up for a deposit, lived with family, and budgeted everything.
It wasn't an easy journey. the couple had consulted with a mortgage broker initially and were gutted to learn their borrowing power was limited.
'When we had this first consultation our borrowing capacity was very low. I was working one part time job and two casual jobs,' she said.
Ms Easton explained that, even though she was working to the point that sometimes she'd go weeks without a day off, she didn't have job security because it was all contract and casual work.
While her partner Logan had secure work, she didn't, and therefore they were at a financial stalemate.
'It wasn't until I secured full time work in Newcastle and having a few more months of savings behind us that we consulted with our second mortgage broker,' she said.
'Our borrowing capacity had increased by over $100,000 to $705,000 max, inclusive of deposit and we finally had something we could work with.'
Getting financial approval was only half the battle, she then found it was hard to be 'taken seriously' by real estate agents.
'From open homes full of investors looking to expand their property portfolios, to conveyancers who treated us like an afterthought and feeling like we were so out of our depth,' she said.
Even though the couple managed to push through not being seen as serious buyers, they also had some heartbreaking near misses before they secured their property.
One property they made an offer on was listed with a price guide between $620,000 and $680,000, and the couple thought they had a 'good chance' because that was within their range.
'We put an offer in relatively quickly, and it had jumped to $735,000, and it ended up selling for $740,000,' she said.
'At that point, we honestly gave up.'
Ms Easton said they truly thought they just didn't have enough cash to buy and would end-up locked out.
'We thought we would fall victim to the housing crisis that we continually heard about, and we just kept seeing everything sell way above asking and outside our price range,' she said.
They could only purchase their house because the sellers were motivated more by who bought their home than by money.
Ms Easton said she'd had her eye on the home for a while, but it was out of their price range, and then the price guide dropped.
'We thought that something for sure had to be wrong with the house. Why has no one bought it? And why has it dropped in price,' she said.
The 23-year-old said the place was a little tired but had great bones, and they could instantly see the potential.
'We grilled the agent to find out what was wrong with the place, it turns out the lady who owned the home had sadly passed,' she said.
Developers had reportedly offered over $800,000 for the property but the owner's children turned it down because they didn't want development to take over the neighbourhood.
'They also wanted the home to go to a young couple who were first time home buyers,' she said, a revelation that had her 'crying'.
'I literally could not believe it when I got the call to say they had accepted our offer, I could not believe how lucky we were to have come across people who felt like they were in our corner before they even knew us
'In a world with so much economic stress, they forfeited a large profit, and we were the lucky ones; we were very grateful.'
Even months later, Ms Easton and her partner still feel lucky they were able to secure the property, even though it took them six months to move in.
They're now focused on renovating it and using 'elbow grease' to get the job done.
Of course, maintaining a mortgage isn't easy, but the young couple said their mortgage broker was brilliant at preparing them.
'We actually saved our weekly repayments for the whole six months of settlement, so we knew what we were in for,' she said.
'We also budget our groceries, but we do live with the fear of unexpected costs because after mortgage, bills and groceries, there really is not much left.
'Let's say that we aren't looking forward to a holiday anytime soon.'