Often the thing that most first home buyers find the hardest about buying a home is getting together a deposit. It’s a large chunk of money to pull together, and for most people it’s more than likely you will need a 20% deposit. For those in Christchurch and much of the country, this means you are looking around the $132,000 mark for a 20% deposit on a $660,000 house.
Thankfully there are a number of ways of making up a deposit. Here are the four most common ways first home buyers do it….
CASH SAVINGS: This is often the main part of your deposit and includes any cash you have saved in your bank account to go towards a house. Generally banks like to see at least 5% of your deposit be made up of cash savings.
KIWISAVER: If you are buying a first home and meet the criteria, you can withdraw most of your KiwiSaver funds to use towards your first home. If you’ve been contributing to KiwiSaver for a while, you might be pleasantly surprised as to how much you have in your account! You can find out more about the qualifying criteria for KiwiSaver here.
FIRST HOME GRANT: This is a grant given by the government to first home buyers. You do need to meet income criteria and house cap criteria, however if you meet this you can receive up to $10,000 for a single person and $20,000 for a couple. For first home buyers this is a great addition to your deposit, and well worth trying to buy within the price caps to qualify for this grant.
GIFTS & FAMILY ASSISTANCE: Quite often, parents may loan or gift their children money in order to help them into a house. When this is arranged it does need to be made clear as to whether it is a loan or a gift and whether repayments or interest are required, as if it needs to be paid back, this can have an impact on how much you can borrow. It’s best to get a lawyer involved in this process to ensure that everyone is on the same page.
If you’d like help with working out how much you have in total for a deposit, then get in touch with the team at Better Choice Home Loans. We can sit down with you and add up your total deposit from all sources to give you an idea of where you are and if you need to save anything further. We can also give you some advice on how to reduce spending and consolidate debts if required.
Give our Better Choice Mortgage Advisors a call today.