First home secured in Elizabeth Bay for $1.3M in three weeks

The brief

A first home does more than get you off the rental treadmill. It sets up everything after it. What you can buy next, how much equity you build, and how confident you feel doing it again all trace back to that first purchase.

Which is why it is worth getting right.

Like most first-home buyers looking at the Eastern Suburbs, our client wanted somewhere they would enjoy living, and they wanted to know they were making a sensible decision at the same time.

The brief came down to:

• Two bedrooms
• Secure parking
• A layout that actually works
• Nothing that needed doing on day one
• Room for the value to grow
• Public transport, cafés and the harbour within easy reach

The hard part, as always, was fitting all of that into the budget. At this end of the market every decision costs you something somewhere else. Our job is to help clients balance those trade-offs without losing sight of long-term value.

The strategy: adjust the search, not the budget

We started across several Eastern Suburbs pockets. As we went through what was actually available, one suburb kept coming out ahead for this particular buyer.

Elizabeth Bay.

It sits quietly next to Potts Point and gives you most of the same things, usually with bigger apartments, quieter streets and a more residential feel.

For this client that was the whole opportunity. Instead of paying extra for the postcode next door, they got more space, more privacy and a calmer street, still a few minutes from everything they wanted to be near.

Sometimes the best buying decision is not changing your budget. It is changing where you look.

The property

The apartment stood out straight away. It sits in a small block of ten and puts together a set of things that are getting hard to find at this price:

• Two good sized bedrooms
• One updated bathroom
• Secure off-street parking
• A renovation already done and done well
• A roomy, sensible floorplan
• Only ten apartments in the building

The location does as much work as the apartment. Rushcutters Bay Park is a two-minute walk away, and Kings Cross Station, the harbour foreshore and the cafés and restaurants of the area are all close enough to walk to.

You get the convenience of living this close to the city on a street that still feels residential, which is not an easy pairing to find.

Why Elizabeth Bay made sense

Every suburb has its own character. Elizabeth Bay struck the right balance for this client between somewhere to enjoy and somewhere sensibly priced.

Being that close to Potts Point puts some of Sydney’s best cafés, restaurants and small shops on the doorstep. Elizabeth Bay itself stays quieter, greener and more residential.

For someone living in the apartment that is a good combination. For someone holding it for twenty years, it is a good one too.

These are the suburbs we tend to point first-home buyers towards. Established, walkable, easy to live in, and with lasting appeal to other owner-occupiers.

A purchase that shapes the future

Helping someone buy their first property is one of the better parts of this job, mostly because it rarely stops there.

Getting the first decision right is what opens up the next one, whether that turns out to be a family home, an investment or simply the security of owning where you live.

Three weeks after taking the brief, our client had secured a renovated apartment in one of Sydney’s tightly held harbourside suburbs, in a spot that is good to live in and should hold its value.

At $1.3 million they did more than get into the market. They got in well.

A first property should do more than put your foot in the door. It should leave you in a decent position for whatever you want to do next.