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"Wait... what?!" I screamed at my friend as she told me she was looking to buy a place in the next few months. This was the same friend who decided to flick her hair tie at me a mere five minutes ago, just to see what I'd do. The same friend who'd just shelled out almost $30 on a disappointing breakfast cocktail with me — paying in scrunched up cash, no less.
I remember feeling an odd sense of betrayal that this person who, in all other areas of life, was in the same boat as me, but was somehow in the financial position where she was getting ready to become...a homeowner.
Just like everything else we're supposed to have done before a certain age, the pressure to buy property tends to creep up on you. One minute you and your friends are splitting the cost of guac, and the next, everyone around you is signing leases and posing audaciously in front of SOLD! signs.
If you can relate, then it's probably a relief to know that you're certainly not alone. And the rules around what you need to do, or the position you need to be in in order to get a foot in the door of the property market may not exist in the ways you think they do. You don't need to have a partner, you don't actually need to have a job at a desk, and you definitely don't need to have savings in the hundreds of thousands to get in the property game. We know it's easier said than done, but the pathways to homeownership truly are endless.
To demystify some of the fog and get into the nitty-gritty details of it all, we asked our readers to tell us all about their journeys. Some have had help from their parents, some leveraged first home buyer schemes, some thought they settled for less only to be happy with the outcome, and some are already thinking of re-selling. Through their stories, you'll see just how different the process looks for everyone, and that, if you do your homework, you may be closer to snagging yourself a home than you think.
Read on for exactly how 13 Aussie women managed to get into the property game.
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