First home buyers
Your first home is an investment. Whether you treat it as one or not.
Nobody tells you that at an open for inspection. They tell you about the kitchen. But the postcode you pick with your first deposit decides how long it takes to afford the place you actually want, and ten years later the gap between a good pick and an average one is bigger than most people's deposits.
The number nobody shows you
Two suburbs, the same price today, $300,000 apart at the start.
Langwarrin and Ringwood are both Melbourne, both a house on land, and today they cost within $1,623 of each other. Langwarrin sits at $995,896 and Ringwood at $997,519.
The difference is how they got there. Over ten years Langwarrin has compounded at +5.8% a year and Ringwood at +1.3%. Run those rates backwards and the first home buyer who picked Langwarrin paid somewhere near $567,241, while the one who picked Ringwood paid closer to $874,922.
Langwarrin · VIC 3910
$567,241
Roughly what it took ten years ago
$995,896 today
+5.8% a year
Ringwood · VIC 3134
$874,922
Roughly what it took ten years ago
$997,519 today
+1.3% a year
Same house price today. About $307,681 difference in what it took to get in the door.
That is not a story about Ringwood being a bad suburb. It is a lovely place and plenty of people are very happy there. It is a story about what happens when the suburb you buy your first place in is chosen off a Saturday drive instead of off the numbers.
Typical prices are modelled estimates as at August 2026, sourced from HtAG Analytics. The ten year figures are today's price run backwards through the published annualised growth rate, not recorded medians from 2016. Past growth is not a forecast.
Why I care about this one
I bought my first place as a numbers decision. It paid for the house I live in now.
I was a tradie. I did not have a big deposit and I did not have a family cheque behind me. What I had was the willingness to buy where the data said instead of where my mates were buying.
That first purchase is the reason I live in a $1.6m home today, and I got there before I turned 30. Not because I picked a winner. Because I did not pick a loser with my first and only deposit.
That is the entire process we run for first home buyers now. Same one I used on myself, same one we use for investors. The only thing that changes is that you have to like the place too.
Read the full storyHow it works
Same five moves. Your first one just has to be liveable as well.
-
We work out what you can actually do
Borrowing capacity, deposit, and what the repayments look like on a bad month rather than a good one. If the honest answer is wait six months and save, you will hear it.
-
We put your suburb list next to the data
You will have a list. Everyone does. We run it against ten years of price, rent and vacancy before you fall in love with a house in a market that has gone sideways since 2016.
-
We find the market, then the house
The economics of the area first: jobs, population, supply, incomes. Then the actual property, on market, off market and pre market.
-
We negotiate like it's our money
First home buyers get worked over at auctions more than anyone, because agents can smell the emotion. That stops being a problem when the person bidding is not the person who has to live there.
-
We get it to settlement
Conveyancer, building and pest, finance dates, keys. You end up with a home and a purchase you can explain to yourself in ten years.
Before you ask
It's $20,000 flat, GST included, and on a first home that is a lot of money.
Same fee as every other client, at every budget. I am not going to pretend that is small when you are scraping a deposit together. On a $650,000 purchase it is a real bite out of what you have saved.
So here is the test, and it is the only one that matters. If the suburb the numbers point at and the suburb you were going to buy in are the same place, do not pay me. Go and buy it. If they are different places, the ten year gap on this page has been north of $300,000, and that is what the fee is being weighed against.
If the price is the sticking point rather than the maths, there are cheaper agents out there and one of them will happily take you on. No hard feelings.
Do this bit yourself, free
Check your shortlist before you talk to anyone.
Every tool on this site is free and most need no sign up. If you only do one thing, put the suburbs on your list into the Momentum Dial and see where each one sits in its cycle. It takes about a minute and it is the same data we start a paid search from.
Worth a look while you are there: Craigieburn has done +7.3% a year over ten years and still sits at $747,663, which is about as close to a first home buyer's suburb as the Melbourne data gets right now.
First home questions
The ones that come up on every first call.
Do you actually work with first home buyers?
Yes, at the same flat $20,000 including GST as everyone else. What changes is not the service, it is that most people buying their first home have never had anyone treat the purchase as a financial decision before, and that is the whole job.
Is a buyer’s agent worth it on a first home?
Honestly, not always. On a $650,000 purchase the fee is a real chunk of your deposit, and if paying it means you buy a worse property or wait another year, don’t do it. It stacks up when the difference between the suburb you were going to buy in and the one the numbers point at is worth many times the fee. On the ten year numbers on this page, that gap has been over $300,000. Sometimes it is nothing. I’ll tell you which on the call.
Will you just tell me to buy somewhere I don’t want to live?
No. It is your home and you have to live in it. What I will do is show you what the data says about the suburbs on your list before you commit, and if one of them has gone backwards for a decade you will hear that from me early rather than from a valuer later. Then it is your call. Plenty of people buy the suburb anyway and that is a completely fair decision to make with your eyes open.
What about the first home buyer grants and stamp duty concessions?
Your broker and your conveyancer handle those, and they are better at it than I am. I am not a lender, an accountant or a financial adviser, and I stay in my lane on that stuff. What I do is find and negotiate the property.
Can I use you if I’m buying with a partner or my family is helping?
Yes, and it is common. The only thing that matters is that everyone who is signing is in the room for the first conversation, because a brief that half the buyers disagree with wastes everybody’s time.
Do you only buy in Melbourne?
No. Every search starts with all 15,000 suburbs in the country and narrows to the handful that suit your brief. For a first home that usually lands somewhere you can actually get to, because you have to live in it, but where I live has nothing to do with where you should buy.
Fifteen minutes, free, no sales script.
Bring your suburb list and your budget. I will tell you what the data says about both, and whether you need me at all. Plenty of first calls end with me telling someone to go and buy the place they already found.