Buying your first home can feel overwhelming—especially when everyone around you is shouting different advice. Scroll the listings. Talk to a broker. Wait for the market to drop. Just get on the ladder at any cost.
The problem usually isn't a lack of effort. It's doing the right things in the wrong order.
In this episode, we walk you through our proven 10-step first home buyer system, also known as the PACE framework. It's designed as a practical first home buyer step by step guide to help you cut through the noise, avoid common traps, and move forward with clarity instead of stress.
Rather than "just looking for a house," this episode shows you how to execute a strategy. If you've ever wondered how to buy your first home step by step in a way that actually works in the Australian market, this is where it starts.
🏡 Why Order Matters When Buying Your First Home
One of the biggest first home buyer mistakes we see is jumping straight into property inspections without any real preparation. It feels productive—but it's often the fastest way to derail your purchase.
When you start inspecting homes before you understand your budget, borrowing power, or long-term plan, you risk falling in love with a property you can't afford or one that doesn't support your future life. This is how buyers end up emotionally anchored to unrealistic price points, leading to disappointment at auctions or rushed decisions just to "win."
Understanding how to buy your first home step by step protects you from emotional burnout. Property buying isn't a sprint—it's a process. Without the right order, buyers often exhaust themselves early, attending dozens of inspections with no clear criteria or strategy.
Following a structured first home buyer guide shifts you from guessing and hoping to making informed, confident decisions backed by data and preparation.
💸 Preparing to Buy Your First Home: Your Team, Your Money, and Your Plan
Phase one of the PACE system is all about preparing to buy your first home properly—before you ever step into an open inspection.
This starts with building the right support team. That includes independent professionals such as a solicitor or conveyancer and, critically, a mortgage broker for first home buyers. A good broker doesn't just find a loan; they help you understand your real borrowing capacity, navigate government grants, and ensure your pre-approval stands up when it matters.
We also unpack the financial realities many buyers underestimate. Beyond your deposit, there are significant hidden costs of buying a home that can quietly derail your plans. Building and pest inspections, stamp duty adjustments, strata reports, legal fees, insurance, moving costs, and immediate repairs can add up far faster than most buyers expect.
This phase also includes forward planning. We discuss the importance of buying a home that works not just for today, but for the next five to seven years. Selling too quickly because you've outgrown your first property can wipe out hard-earned equity through transaction costs alone.
🔍 Action: How to Search Without Drowning in Listings
Once your foundation is set, it's time to move into the action phase—and this is where a clear first home buyer checklist becomes essential.
Instead of endless scrolling and weekend burnout, we show you how to search with intent. That means narrowing suburbs based on data, not just emotion, and defining a "minimum viable property" so you know what's non-negotiable and where you can be flexible.
We also break down how to interpret agent language, spot misleading price guides, and filter out properties that were never going to work for you. One key step in this phase is the "pause and calibrate" moment—stopping after several inspections to reassess whether your expectations align with the real market.
This step alone helps buyers avoid months of frustration chasing properties that don't exist at their price point.
📑 Commitment: Methods of Sale, Due Diligence, and Strategy
This is where decisions become real—and where having a reliable first home buyer guide Australia makes all the difference.
Methods of sale vary significantly across states. An auction strategy in Sydney requires a completely different approach to a private treaty in Brisbane or a fixed-date sale in Melbourne. We explain how these differences affect your pricing, negotiation, and risk.
We also cover due diligence in detail, including building inspections, strata reviews, and how to assess comparable sales so you don't overpay. This is the stage where logic must override emotion—because skipping checks here is one of the most expensive first home buyer mistakes you can make.
🎯 Moving Forward with Confidence
By the end of this episode, you'll have a clear, practical map of the first home buying process—not just what to do, but when to do it.
We also touch on final considerations like settlement, insurance timing, and risk transfer—areas many buyers don't realise can expose them financially if handled incorrectly.
Our goal isn't to sell you a dream. It's to give you the education, structure, and confidence to stop guessing, avoid costly traps, and buy your first home with clarity and control. You don't need to know everything—you just need the right order. And we'll guide you home. 🏡
