The Regret List: What First Home Buyers Wish They'd Known Before Signing

Ask a first home buyer what they'd change and almost none of them say "the price." A wave of confessions doing the rounds this month - buyers admitting what they wish they'd known before signing - tells a different story. The regrets cluster around three things: costs nobody warned them about, decisions made without the right advice, and fears that turned out to be manageable once actually faced.

None of it is random. Every regret on the list is avoidable with the right prep before contracts are exchanged. Here's what buyers are actually saying, and what to do differently.

The Cost Nobody Budgeted For

The single most common regret is underestimating everything that isn't the deposit or the loan repayment. Conveyancing runs $1,000 to $2,500. Building and pest inspections add another $400 to $800. Loan establishment fees, lender's mortgage insurance where applicable, and settlement adjustments can tack on $500 to $1,500 more. Then come the costs that aren't "property" costs at all - removalists, cleaning, storage, and furnishing a home from scratch - which buyers consistently say blindsided them the most.

Add it up and buyers without a first home buyer stamp duty exemption should budget 4-6% of the purchase price on top of the deposit for these extras. Even buyers who qualify for an exemption should still budget 2-3%. On a $700,000 purchase, that's the difference between a smooth settlement and scrambling for another $20,000-$40,000 in the final fortnight.

The Buyer's Agent Question

A second recurring regret: not engaging a buyer's agent, or not knowing one was an option. Buyer's agents typically charge 1-2.5% of the purchase price, often with a $2,000-$5,000 upfront retainer for research and strategy. That's a real cost - but the buyers who used one report negotiated savings in the order of 3-7% below asking price, which on a $700,000-$900,000 purchase can more than cover the fee.

The catch: a buyer's agent isn't automatically the right call for every first home buyer. If you're already deposit-constrained under a scheme like the First Home Guarantee, adding a $3,000-$5,000 retainer on top of settlement costs can be the wrong trade-off. The decision should be made deliberately, before you start inspecting properties - not discovered as a regret afterwards.

Buying Solo, and What the Industry Still Gets Wrong

Single women now buy close to one in eight homes sold in Australia - a rate that's grown by more than a tenth over the past decade even as solo purchases by men have fallen. Yet only 34% of women bought solo in the past year, against 44% of men, and much of that gap traces back to an industry that still defaults to picturing a buyer as half a couple.

Buyers navigating this alone report a consistent pattern: assumptions from selling agents about who's "really" making the decision, and a general sense of being sized up differently than a couple would be. The practical fix isn't complicated - it's having a mortgage broker or buyer's advocate in your corner as a buffer, so every conversation with a selling agent runs through someone whose only job is representing your interests.

The Auction Fear That Wasn't Real

The one regret that cuts the other way: buyers who avoided auctions out of fear, then found the process far more transparent than expected once they actually went through one. Auctions were made out to be terrifying, one buyer put it - but in practice, watching bidding happen in the open turned out to be easier to read than a private treaty negotiation happening behind closed doors.

That doesn't mean walking into an auction unprepared is smart. It means the fear itself shouldn't be the reason a buyer rules out a property. The actual preparation - a building inspection before auction day, unconditional finance approval, and a firm ceiling price decided in advance - is what determines whether an auction goes well, not whether you're naturally comfortable with the format.

The Strategist's View: What to Actually Do

Every regret above has the same root cause: a decision made without enough information, under time pressure, at the exact moment stress is highest. The fix is doing the thinking earlier.

• Budget the extras before you shop. Add 4-6% of your target purchase price (2-3% if you qualify for a stamp duty exemption) to your savings target - not just your deposit.
• Decide on a buyer's agent upfront, not mid-search. Weigh the retainer against your deposit position using a borrowing power estimate before you're emotionally attached to a property.
• Buying solo? Get a broker in your corner from day one. It changes who selling agents are actually negotiating with.
• Get unconditional finance approval before auction day. It's the single biggest lever for turning auction anxiety into auction confidence.
• Run the real numbers, not the advertised ones. A mortgage calculator that includes settlement costs gives a truer picture than a repayment estimate alone.

None of this removes the emotional weight of a first home purchase. What it does is move the hard decisions to a point where you can actually think clearly about them - instead of making them for the first time under a settlement deadline.