News Articles & Media Releases

04/12/10
Saving help for buyers
Writer: Gemma Nisbett
Publication: New Homes Guide – The West Australian

Saving the deposit for your first home can be tough but a program from first-homebuyer specialists Homebuyers Centre is aiming to make it easier by providing support – and incentives – along the way.

The Rewards Savings program enabled the builder to guide clients through the process of saving their deposit, giving them advice on how much they could afford and how much they needed to save, sales and marketing manager Jared Stone said.

“If a client is required to save their deposit, we act as a coaching service for them, explaining how the house-and-land packages are put together, how much they’re going to be able to afford in a package and exactly what is included, then we’ll set them on the pathway to getting the deposit together,” he said.

In some cases it was also possible to set land aside for clients and fix the house price for a period of 12 months, providing reassurance that the required deposit wouldn’t go up while you were saving, Mr Stone said.

As an added incentive, the program offered a series of rewards along the way, presenting clients with Gold Class movie tickets once 25 per cent of the deposit had been saved, a $500 Bunnings voucher at the halfway point and a pre-start allowance when the saved amount reached three-quarters of the deposit.

The program was a response to the current finance market, with banks having tightened their lending criteria following the global financial crisis and generally requiring homebuyers to have saved a 5 to 10 per cent deposit, Mr Stone said, although the Homebuyers Centre did offer a form of finance where your deposit could be a gift, rather than savings.

The program had been “very successful” with the builder’s clients, he said.

One such homebuyers is Ashlee Lewis, who went through the Reward Savings program to save her deposit and is now at the stage of choosing the colours and fittings for her home, which will be built in Bertram.

“I had heard good things about Homebuyers Centre from people I knew who had built with them,” she said about her reasons for choosing the builder. She added that having “a little prize at the end of every stage” had been very helpful while she had been saving.