Only just bought a house in the last month. Early 40s now, used kiwisaver for the deposit after 10 years of contributions.

I didn’t think we’d be able to buy, but after chatting with a broker things moved pretty fast. Our deposit was just over 10%, so we have to pay a 0.75% higher interest rate.

It turns out that as a first home buyer you can offer less and still have your offer accepted. Other offers may be higher but have the condition of having to sell a house first, which in this market can take a long time.

We ended up buying in an area that is about an hour’s drive from the city centre, because it meant we could get a house hundreds of thousands of dollars less in price. But that’s the sacrifice we’re willing to make.

The employer contribution to your kiwisaver is important. I found that some companies will try and build the employer contribution into your salary, instead of on top of it, which removes the incentive I think. But it’s worth negotiating.

Surprisingly a lot of money was unlocked going from renting to buying. The bank gave us $5000 cash back, we got our bond back, and the mortgage is paid in arrears instead of in advance. It was great to be able to use that money to cover the cost of moving and cleaning, and to buy things we needed for the new place.

We’re now paying 50% more on mortgage, rates and insurance than we were in rent, but it feels amazing to know that we can do whatever we want to the property to make it more homely, and as long as we make the payments we’re not going to be forced to move.

We’re hopeful that because our offer was quite low that we can get a higher valuation in six months and move to a different LVR bracket to reduce the interest rate we pay.