Buying your next home in Wellington
Book a chatYou've bought a home before. That doesn't necessarily make buying the next one easier
Now there’s a house to sell, a mortgage to repay, equity to calculate and often two transactions that need to line up with each other.
The most useful thing you can do before putting your house on the market or making an offer is work out the numbers.
That’s where we come in.
What's your actual buying budget
The number that matters isn’t simply what your current house might sell for.
We look at:
Likely sale price
minus your existing mortgage
minus agent and selling costs
minus any fees to repay your current loan (fixed rate break costs or cash contributions to be repaid)
equals your deposit likely to be available for your next purchase
Then we combine that with your income and existing commitments to work out what the bank may be prepared to lend.
That’s your useful number.
Existing equity can give you options
If you’ve owned your home for several years, you’ve probably built equity through some combination of mortgage repayments and changes in property value.
That equity can potentially form the deposit for your next home.
In some situations, it may even allow you to buy before selling.
We’ll help establish how much usable equity you actually have rather than simply subtracting the mortgage from an online property estimate.
Get your finance sorted before you offer
When you find the right property, things can happen quickly.
having your lending preapproved means you can make a cleaner, stronger offer and respond quickly if a deadline moves forward.
Especially in Wellington, where a generally quieter market doesn’t necessarily mean a good property will sit around waiting.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I buy before I sell?
Possibly.
If you have sufficient equity and borrowing capacity, a lender may allow you to purchase your next property before your existing property settles.
That can put you in a much stronger negotiating position because your offer doesn’t necessarily need to be conditional on selling your current home.
But it also means temporarily carrying more debt, so it needs to be assessed properly.
What happens if our home sells for less than expected?
This is exactly why we run the numbers first.
A lower sale price can reduce the equity available for your next home and sometimes means renegotiating the purchase price or changing the borrowing structure.
We can model different sale scenarios before you make an offer so you know where the uncomfortable number starts.
What about bridging finance?
Bridging finance is short-term lending designed to bridge the gap between purchasing your next property and receiving the proceeds from your existing one.
It can be useful.
It can also be expensive and comes with additional risk if your existing property takes longer to sell or sells below expectations.
We’ll explain what it would look like in actual dollars before deciding whether it makes sense.
Can we use KiwiSaver for our next home?
Probably not. KiwiSaver withdrawals are restricted to first home buyers usually, and you can only take it out for a home once.
Don’t see your question here?
Good advice is easier to judge by what happens next.
Moving home? Start with the numbers
Before the photography, open homes and offers, let’s work out what the next move looks like financially.