Nicole Haddow

I mean, mortgage stress is where you're paying any more than sort of 30% of your income on your mortgage.

For me, I'd really underestimated body corporate fees, council rates, all of those things really do add up.

So I probably would have had a little bit more in the bank at settlement.

I also really do love the idea of one day having a freestanding property.

There are a lot of challenges for me that came with buying an apartment in terms of the body corporate and understanding how all of that worked and all of the costs that come with that.

Having said that, my property was what I could afford at the time and being in the market for me in the past almost seven years now

six years now, is well worth it.

But I do think this idea that property prices are climbing so fast that you've got to get in right now can be a dangerous mentality, and that was my mentality.

I think there are lots of things that you can look at, save a little bit longer, maybe buy regionally.

Really think about what your lifestyle values are because you really don't want to lose yourself in that, and for a while I definitely did.

Absolutely.

You really don't want to regret that decision because the thing with LMI is, again, that is the sort of thing that relies on you holding that property for 5, 10, 15 years potentially and making sure you get that capital growth.

If you rush into something that you regress and then want to sell, the cost of buying and selling is extraordinary.

So you really need to make sure that that is something that you are going to be happy to hold for a while.

Great advice.

Absolutely, absolutely.

If you want to sell in two years' time, chances are you're not going to have potentially seen the growth that you would have hoped for.

So realistically, the best benefit you will get will be from having it as a long hold.

I used a lot of resources.

The reason I wrote the book was because there wasn't a lot out there that was speaking to me at that time.