Before you go house hunting – it is beneficial to determine your key criteria to make your hunt a lot easier.

Firstly – price and affordability. It is ideal to know exactly how much you can afford and how much you want to spend before you start looking at houses. You don’t want the pain of falling in love with a house only to then find that you cannot afford it. The best thing to do is to get a pre-approval of finance and look at some repayment figures in order to know how much you want to spend on a house.

Next is location. Now that you know how much you can afford – you should consider where you want to buy. Narrow down your location to the top 3 suburbs that you want to live in and focus your search to these areas. This will enable you to educate yourself on those suburbs specifically and pretty soon you’ll know how much house you should expect to get in a particular suburb for your money.

Then comes what exactly you want to buy. Is it an apartment? A house with a flat fenced section? A townhouse with no garden to mow? How many bedrooms and bathrooms? Close to public transport? Create a list with your MUST HAVES and your LIKE TO HAVEs – e.g. # of bedrooms – e.g. the flat section.

Determining your key criteria will allow you to go house hunting productively. You will be able to see from the online advertising whether a particular house is worth visiting in person or not and you won’t waste time looking at houses that you don’t want. Remember – Price / Affordability – Location – Must haves / Like to Haves – and your House hunting experience will be a lot enjoyable and productive.