Owen Raskovich

Well, according to the Commonwealth Bank's latest quarterly report, 15% of the people that are coming through and getting mortgages are first home buyers.

That's up from 11% a year ago.

That's almost a 30% increase in first home buyer activity.

So that's a really good thing.

Yeah, prices might come down, but they might only come down to where first home buyers can afford to buy.

What we're also seeing is fewer interest-only loans, meaning investors...

are also not using interest-only loans so they're switching over to principal and interest which is a good thing because then it means they're paying actually paying off the loan we're also seeing fewer investors in the market so again if you're a buyer this is probably a good thing for you longer term at least another thing that people have i've come across recently which is kind of scary i guess is this idea that you can sell now and then buy another house

This might be a good idea in theory if you expect prices to fall, but just remember that there are frictional costs that go into selling a property.

It's not like you log into your CommSec brokerage account and you click sell on your Commonwealth bank shares.

To sell a house, you typically need an agent.

You typically need to pay $3,000 to $5,000 to have your home on realestate.com or wherever it goes.

And then you have to pay taxes if it's not your primary residence and all these different things.

So I think the best course of action for most people who aren't really stretched is to just definitely have a good budget, sit down with your partner, talk about how you can make savings, where you can save money.

Maybe there's some things that you can sell in your house that you don't need.

We talk about selling some junk to get that emergency cash buffer up.

all of these different things.

And these are, by the way, covered in our free course.

So just take that if you need any more ideas or just join one of those online Facebook communities or whatever, where there's some sort of free tips and strategies to save money and to make money.

Final thing is, if you are hiring off a property, don't forget, it's better to have a 20% deposit or more, or at least a guarantor, so you can avoid Lenders Mortgage Insurance, or LMI, which protects the bank, not the homeowner, or not the investor, or not anyone else.

It protects the bank, and it goes into your loan.