Vinit KS

How many of you have your purchased a flat in NCR, how many of you think it was a easy job? In the next 7 minutes, I am going to talk about my experience of buying a flat and learning from it.

Just this week, my home loan is approved and I am close to closing on my first home. Like many others, I am living on rented house and dreamt of owning of my own house. But unlike others, I never planned for it and never saved enough money to even pay the down payment of 20% that is needed to buy a house. But from the day I came to Noida 3 years back, I started thinking of buying my own house just because of astounding amount of rent one has to pay here. For living in a 2 BHK flat, minimum one gets is between 15-20 k.

Being an IT professional the first thing I did was that I registered myself at various property portals like magicbricks, 99acres.com. And as soon as I registered there, I started getting hundreds of call daily and most of them were from property dealers who cannot be validated and did not find any deal worth to explore more. So, second thing I learnt is not to hurry in registering yourself on these portals, do it very judiciously. Then, I decided to collect addresses of all available locations where I can go and see the property in person. I roamed around for around a week and finally I  narrowed down with some ready to move flat options. Then I got my home boss my wife to approve one out of those, and after some deliberations we zeroed in for a flat in Prateek Laurel in sector 120.

However, one of the hiccup was that it was crossing my budget by more than 30% but still since we liked it after so many options we saw, so we thought to go for it. This was a biggest challenge for me in buying the house, since couple of banks even rejected my application and I started wondering if even my initial money paid initially would be forfeited. Then for safer  side, I applied loan application in three banks, after some hitches, all were approved withing 2 weeks of time. I learnt that different banks have different rule like rejection reason was that my property was a resale deal but not registered. I rejected some of the banks since they are not funding the required amount of loan to me. But what I learnt from it was  that you should never close a deal unless you get the loan pre-approved. And next learning was that you should start saving early so that you have enough money to pay your downpayments and you don’t have to go for personal loan like me. I cannot stress just how important it is to be patient during the home buying process. As with any home purchase, I faced many bumps in the road, but I managed to keep my patience intact.

When I went through the Allotment letter of the seller and builder, i found that he was earning around 15 lacs by this deal which was astounding 35% profit in just a year for him. I was always skeptical about investing in real estate going by the disarray and corruption in this industry. But after seeing this, I learnt that if possible one should certainly invest in real estate at least for his personal use. In this process, I saw that there are many good financing options available as well for buying houses, the only need is to explore it. I have decided to invest more in real estate once I am able to bring down my current EMI to acceptable levels.

During that whole month, I couldn’t concentrate much on work or anything else. It seemed silly because we were close to closing the deal but some or other challenges were cropping up. When lacs of your rupees  are in limbo for a whole months, it’s slightly traumatizing. Hence, the learning is to be prepared emotional roller coaster ride!

Having said all challenges and limitation, its still very important that we enjoy the process. If you remember to take a step back and enjoy the process, it can remove a great deal of stress. Spending Saturdays looking at homes is fun! Knowing that you’re about to be a homeowner is exciting. You get to choose your perfect house—-no one can choose for you. It’s definitely a process like no other, so take the time to relish it!

Thank You!

P.S. – Delivered this speech as my P3 (CC3) project at Toastmasters.