Preparing financially
Preparing financially: the complete overview
The seven-step framework for understanding what you can safely afford, before you start searching for a property.
- Preparing financially is a sequence, not a single number: position, budget, deposit, costs, stress-test, loan choice, then pre-approval.
- A lender's serviceability assessment and your own safe household budget are two different things — a lender approving an amount is not a recommendation to spend it.
- Every dynamic figure in this hub (thresholds, rates, grant amounts) is drawn from Delora's knowledge graph of primary Australian sources, not estimated from memory.
The seven-question framework
Preparing financially isn't one calculation — it's a sequence. Know your current position, choose a budget you can actually sustain (not just what a bank will approve), build your deposit, calculate every buying cost (not just the obvious ones), stress-test the repayment against real setbacks, understand your loan and government-support options, and get your documents ready before you apply. Each of those steps has its own guide in this hub.
A key distinction
A lender's expense model and your real household budget are not necessarily the same.
Lenders use standardised expense benchmarks to assess applications quickly and consistently. Your actual household budget — childcare, irregular costs, the buffer you personally want — is yours to define, and it can be more conservative than what a lender's model assumes.
Financial position worksheet
Before working through the other guides, write down: monthly income (take-home), essential expenses, discretionary expenses, existing debts, current savings, and any planned life changes (new child, career change, parental leave). This isn't submitted anywhere — it's the starting input for the safe-budget guide and calculator that follow. Delora does not store this information unless you choose to enter it into a tool on this site, and even then it stays in your own browser by default.
Practical checklist
Before you start
- Write down your take-home income, essential expenses, debts and savings
- Note any planned life changes in the next 1-3 years
- Decide roughly when you want to buy — this affects how much deposit-saving time you have
Relevant Delora tool
Questions for a professional
- Based on my actual expenses (not a lender's standard benchmark), what repayment would you consider comfortable for my household?
- What information will you need from me to assess my application?