As most of you all know, we’ve been renting an apartment since we started our family. It was only in 2013 that we decided to purchase our own house. We moved to our house just last year, imagine we’ve been renting an apartment for 10 years! It’s not that easy to buy a house here in the Philippines. And it’s not easy to look for the perfect place/ community to grow a family. We even considered going abroad and see if we can start anew.
Out of all the places, we fell in love in Australia. Melbourne is ranked as most liveable city! The city is filled with parks, perfect for big family like ours. It’s also considered as UNESCO City of Literature, so many books to fill my kids’ curious minds! And of course, the houses!
We both wanted a house and not a condominium. It’s a big factor that we’re both raised in rural communities and not urban communities. The houses are lovely! Even the house and land for sale in Victoria, Australia were lovely and we can also imagine living in that area.
If only we can have a house there! But our house search though was limited to the places near us. We started our search in communities near the place we were renting. And while looking for house, we’ve learned that there are different types of houses and each one is priced differently. There’s duplex, single attached, and detached.
Duplex type of house are the kind of houses that shares a common wall usually on both side of the property. Its facade sometimes can be confused as one house but it’s actually 2 houses built but shares the same wall. Based from the houses we’ve seen, most duplex have their own parking area. We found this kind of house not suitable for us.
Single attached type of houses are the kind of houses that also shares a common wall but only on one side of the property. This was the kind of house that was offered to us. It seems very ideal for our family since it has parking space and a small space for kids to run.
We decided on buying a detached house as what we always prefer since we’ve seen those fabulous detached houses for sale in Melbourne. As the name implies, this kind of house is a stand-alone. It does not share a common wall in any side of the property, in fact it has its own fence. It also has its own parking and an ample space for gardening or whatever suits the house owner.
The house that we bought is not RFO or ready for occupancy. We paid the equity first and they started building the house when we’re done with the half of the equity. If you’re planning to have your own house, you’ll face the same question as we had before, RFO or build your own house?
From our experience, RFO (or like our arrangement) can be more expensive than building your own house but it is less stressful. We just need to take care of the payments as the house is done and ready to be occupied. The only disadvantage we’ve experienced so far is that we have no say on the style of the house or where things should be. It was minor in our case. I think, it would have been more difficult for us to build our house from scratch.
If buying a house for the first time, knowing the type of houses as your first step is very important. This will give you a glimpse of what kind of house is best for you and your family.
