What I wish more people knew before buying their first home

After years sitting across the table as a mortgage broker in Palm Beach, this isn't a how-to and it isn't financial advice. It's just a collection of patterns I keep noticing, written down in case any of them are useful to someone about to go through it for the first time.

One: the emotional cost of buying is almost always higher than people expect, and the emotional cost of not buying when you wanted to is also higher than people expect. There isn't a path through the property market that's free of stress, only different shapes of it.

Two: the people who feel calmest at settlement are usually the ones who started preparing six to twelve months earlier, not because they did anything dramatic, but because they had time on their side.

Three: nobody's first home is the home they describe in their daydreams. That's not a failure of the market, it's just the nature of starting somewhere. The daydream home tends to be the third or fourth one, not the first.

Four: the smaller decisions, the loan structure, the offset, the repayment cycle, the way you set up your accounts, often matter more over a decade than the bigger ones people obsess over in week one.

Five: ask sooner. Almost every conversation I have with first home buyers ends with some version of, 'I wish I'd called you six months ago.' I'd much rather have a free chat with someone who isn't ready yet than meet them in a panic the week before an auction.