It is important when you decide to buy a home that you have a full understanding of the costs associated with your purchase. Often people assume the only cost of buying a home in our real estate market is the price of the home and that is it.

There are a lot of additional costs that you must be prepared for when buying a home and it is important that you are fully aware of them. You will need to have some additional money set aside to cover these costs unless you have already made arrangements with your bank to cover these costs and absorb them into your mortgage.

Your largest initial expense will be your deposit. As a first time buyer (or even a repeat buyer) this should generally be approximately 5% of the purchase price, however, it will be up to the seller to determine how much they want in order to feel confident that you won’t walk away from the deal without your deposit if you need to.