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Straight Answers · First home buyers

What is the first step to buy your first home?

Bayley Clarke · Mortgage broker on the road · Last checked 11 August 2026 · 3 min read or a 4 min watch

Prefer to read? The whole answer is written out below.

Why a calculator won't cut it

Every single bank's policy is different. Your financial world is probably more complex than you think, even if in your head it's "I get paid casual, this is how much they'll let me borrow." One lender takes all of your casual income, another shades it, another wants a longer history in the job. Same person, same payslips, very different answers.

An online calculator from one bank can't sift through any of that. It gives you one lender's rough guess and sends the doomscrolling off in the wrong direction. A broker's job at this stage is to cut through the noise on how each bank will actually treat your income and give you a pre-qualified figure you can plan around.

The way I run it: I pre-qualify you as part of the work I do, before anything goes near a lender. If I'm not happy with the figures because they don't meet a lender's criteria, I'm not sending the application in. That's how you protect your file and your confidence at the same time.

The doomscrolling trap

Look, I enjoy realestate.com as much as anyone. I'm not buying any time soon and I still look. But here's what happens without your numbers: you spend six months looking at million dollar properties because in your head you reckon you can afford one. Then you finally have the chat and find out you can borrow $700k.

You're disheartened. You're annoyed. And because you were locked onto one price range the whole time, your first thought is "I can't buy a place", when the real answer is you were aiming at the wrong target.

What knowing your number changes

Once you've got the real figure, you can start playing with the variables instead of guessing:

• Property type. If it's $700k, maybe you start with an apartment or a townhouse, build from there, and upgrade or keep it in a few years.
• Location. Maybe a house is on if you go further out from where you're living now, because prices are cheaper.
• Timeline. If capacity is limited because you've only just started in your industry but the income growth is coming, we can workshop it: "in two years I might be earning this, how much could I borrow then?"

The number isn't just where you are. It's how you figure out the path to the number you want. Without it you don't know where to start. That's effectively it.