Thinking about buying your first home? This award-winning online course covers everything you need to know
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From getting your finances in order, to popping that bottle of champagne, buying a home can be a lengthy and complicated process.
And for many people, it feels almost impossible. With the cost-of-living crisis still burning a hole in our bank account, house prices holding steady (not rising but also not decreasing) and a very confusing property market, flirting with the idea of home ownership can be an emotional rollercoaster.
But for Canberra women who have realestate.com bookmarked as a favourite and are Googling “How do I take out a mortgage?”, one locally designed online homebuyer course is helping them achieve their dream by turning that confusion into confidence.
Imparting her wisdom on all things property, Claire Corby from Capital Buyers Agency has relaunched her online course, My Own Home – an easy-to-understand step-by-step guide covering everything you’ve ever wanted to know about buying your own home. And it starts this month.
Claire – who has over 10 years’ experience as a buyer’s agent and has been named Buyer’s Agent of the Year over seven times – designed the course especially for young women buying their first property solo, and for divorced women starting over. She says the aim is to help participants feel fully equipped and empowered to buy their own home.
“It’s about supporting women to set up as strong a future as they can, overcome any emotional blocks, and know what’s just noise and what to pay attention to,” she explains.
“The last time we ran this was in late 2021, during huge price rises. The opportunities today are quite different; interest rates are flattening, and prices with them, there’s a deluge of crappy apartments being marketed to buyers, and I’m run off my feet with inquiry.”
Diving into everything including the bank versus broker argument, how to properly assess a home, the process of auctions and what actually happens once you sign the dotted line, the My Own Home course cuts through the hype and misinformation surrounding homeownership.
Instead, Claire gets back to the basics of what women actually need to know and what many forget to ask about.
“This course strips back all the drama and unnecessary stuff so that at the end, buyers know exactly what they’re looking for, how much it’s likely to cost them, know how to go about securing it, can ask good quality questions and have great advisors if the proverbial hits the fan,” she explains.
The course offers two options depending on the needs of those accessing it: weekly online sessions or a VIP option where Claire offers one-on-one time where you can directly ask her any questions you may have.
Wanting to support first home buyers and newly separated women who might be starting over financially, she says that she finds that one challenge many women face is the psychology of buying – something the course helps them tackle head on.
“Locking down a singular property to the exclusion of all others can cause a bit of fear and anxiety in women. They often do a great job of learning, but the learning curve can be steep and sometimes an ideal place passes them by,” she says.
“Perhaps they sometimes don’t go as hard in negotiating and don’t want to seem impolite. This course offers the support to help them understand they hold great power as a buyer, that they’re allowed to ask lots of questions, and taking up space can be liberating.”
Starting on Friday 25 July (with enrolments closing on Thursday 24 July), the six-week course breaks the process of buying a home into six stages, ensuring her students walk into their next open home feeling empowered thanks to the video lessons, cheat sheets, templates, and checklists provided alongside Claire’s expert advice.
With the course designed to be self-paced, Claire says an hour a week is a good amount of time to wrap your head around the topics she covers.
“Having supported buyers and only buyers since 2014, I get fired up when I see buyers taken advantage of as they’re overwhelmingly represented by an agent. The vast majority of buyers are going solo, learning as they go, and the margin for error is huge,” she says
“The ACT is quite specific in its processes. There aren’t any homebuyer courses I know of that speak to the Canberra market and guide you through with support about the psychology of it too. The auction-heavy culture makes the process that much trickier for buyers who aren’t familiar with the system.”
Grab that aforementioned bottle of champagne – this is how you’ll find and buy – a home you’ll be proud to call your own.
For more information or to register for the course, visit capitalbuyersagency.com.au/myownhome
Images supplied.
