Buying your first home in Australia, step by step.

Before you offer on anything, get pre-approval from your lender. Pre-approval tells you what you can actually spend, and it makes your offer credible to the agent and the seller. It usually lasts around three months and is free to arrange.

Budget beyond the price too. Stamp duty, conveyancing, loan fees and moving costs all land between exchange and settlement, and stamp duty is by far the largest of them.

When your offer is accepted, or before an auction, the seller’s side prepares a contract of sale. Everything that matters lives in it: the price, the settlement date, what is included, and the special conditions, which is where sellers quietly shift risk onto buyers.

And it does not arrive alone. Attached are the searches and certificates the seller has to disclose: title, planning, and for an apartment the strata records.

Get it reviewed before you sign. Common traps include penalty interest above the standard rate if settlement is late, fee stacking on buyer default, and deleted protections. None of them are obvious unless you know what the standard terms look like.

This is the moment Donna was built for: upload the contract and it explains every clause, with the original wording beside it, before a lawyer has even opened the file.

The agent works for the seller. The seller’s solicitor works for the seller. Your conveyancer or solicitor is the only professional in the transaction whose sole job is protecting you.

You can engage a licensed conveyancer or a solicitor; for a straightforward residential purchase either is fine. Ask what their fee covers, who you will actually deal with, and how they will keep you updated between exchange and settlement.

When both sides sign and the contracts swap hands, you have exchanged, and the contract becomes legally binding. At exchange you pay the deposit, usually up to 10% of the price, into a trust account where it stays until settlement.

In most private sales a short cooling-off period follows exchange. The length and the penalty for withdrawing vary by state, and auctions have no cooling-off at all. Know your window before you sign, not after.

A well-drafted contract makes the purchase conditional on the things you cannot control yet: formal finance approval from your lender, and a satisfactory building and pest inspection. If a condition fails by its due date, you can usually walk away with your deposit.

Watch the dates. Conditions expire, and missing a finance deadline can turn a conditional contract into an unconditional one while you are still waiting on the bank.

Your conveyancer orders searches on the property: title, strata records for apartments, council, zoning and planning. They reveal the things an open-for-inspection never will, like an easement through the backyard, unapproved works, a special levy about to land, or the apartment block approved next door.

Read the results, not just the invoice. An adverse search result found before settlement is a negotiating position; found after, it is your problem.

Settlement is usually 30 to 90 days after exchange. In that window your lender prepares the mortgage, your conveyancer prepares the transfer and adjusts the rates and water between you and the seller, and you pay stamp duty, with concessions for many first home buyers depending on the state and price.

Do a final inspection in the last week. The property should be in the same condition as the day you exchanged, with everything the contract includes still in it.

On the day, the conveyancers and the lenders complete the transfer electronically. The money moves, the title transfers into your name, and the land registry and council are notified. You do not need to attend anything.

The moment it completes, the agent is authorised to hand over the keys. That is the whole process: a contract read properly at the start, a handful of dates watched in the middle, and keys at the end.