Buying on her Own
I rang a client recently. The home she'd had her heart set on, on the Mornington Peninsula, was hers. I could hear it in her voice before she'd really said anything. And then she said something I've heard, in different forms, more times than you'd imagine: this is really big for me, because it's the first time I've bought on my own.
She's an adult woman with children. And what she was describing, the joy of it, but also the sheer enormity, is far more common than people realise.
That moment is never lost on me.
Over the years, a good number of the people we've sat alongside have been women buying or selling on their own. Women buying alone for the first time. Women starting again after a separation or a divorce, learning to make decisions that two people used to make together. Women selling the family home as widows, carrying grief and paperwork in the same week.
When I look back at who we've worked with so far, almost half, close to forty-five per cent, have been single women. That figure has stayed with me. It's given me such deep insight into how significant this decision is, the importance of getting these things right, and what truly matters when you're the one making the call, and the house will be yours alone.
What follows is true for every buyer. But I'm writing it for women in particular, because so often you are doing this with no one to hand the hard parts to.
Have the contract reviewed properly
Here is something that surprises people more often than it should: the contract is not just paperwork to sign at the end. It's a document to be read closely, by someone who knows what they're reading, before you're emotionally committed to the place.
A client was getting ready to make an offer on a property recently. Before she went anywhere near a price, the contract was reviewed, and in the reviewing, something surfaced. Something she would never have known to look for, and something that genuinely mattered to the decision in front of her. She hadn't realised a contract review was even a step. To her, you found the house and you bought the house.
But that one review changed what we needed to check next. It pointed us toward a closer inspection of the property, a question we wouldn't have thought to ask if the contract hadn't been read with care.
A conveyancer or solicitor reviewing the contract early isn't an optional extra. It's one of the quiet, unglamorous things that protects you from a problem you can't yet see.
Get a building inspection, and choose your builder carefully
The second thing I'd say to any woman buying on her own is this: have a building inspection done, and have it done first.
Not all building inspectors are equal. The one you want is the one with a reputation for being thorough, genuinely detailed, the kind who looks where others glance. Because the value of that report isn't only in finding the obvious. It's in understanding what work a home might need, and when. What's urgent. What can wait a year. What's a decade away.
That timeline matters more than people realise, and not just for peace of mind. It feeds directly into value. If you know what the property will ask of you in the short, medium and long term, you know what it's truly worth to you, and how far you can, and should, go on price.
When you're buying on your own, there's no one to talk it through with at the end of the day. A thorough builder gives you something solid to stand on. You're not guessing. You know exactly what you're stepping into.
Understand what value actually is
This is the one I'd underline twice, because value is genuinely hard to read on your own.
When a property is advertised with a price range, it's worth pausing to ask what that range is really telling you. Is it a reflection of true market value? Is it what the owners are hoping to realise? Or is it a number set in a slightly different market, a market that has since moved, leaving the range sitting where things were, not where they are now?
These are three very different things, and the difference can be tens of thousands of dollars.
This isn't a reflection on anyone's integrity. Markets shift, and sometimes they shift faster than a quoted range can keep up with. But it does mean the advertised range cannot be the thing you anchor to. Understanding value independently of that range, what the property is genuinely worth today, with everything you now know about it, is one of the most important pieces of work there is.
It's also one of the hardest things to do on your own, because value isn't a feeling. It's worked out, carefully, from comparable sales and condition and timing and a clear head. When emotion is high, and buying a home on your own is nothing if not emotional, a steady, objective read on value is what keeps you from paying for someone else's hope.
On her own, but not alone
I think often about the women we've walked beside. The ones doing it alone for the first time. The ones rebuilding after a marriage ended. The ones letting go of a home full of decades.
What they've shown me is that buying on your own doesn't mean doing it unsupported. The decisions are still yours, they should be. But the weight of them doesn't have to sit on you alone. A contract read properly. A builder you can trust. A clear, honest sense of what a place is really worth. These are the things that turn a daunting decision into a grounded one.
And when it all comes together, when she's settled into a home that's truly hers, the choice hers but never carried alone, it's a joy to be a part of. I don't think it ever gets old.
If you're a woman thinking about buying on your own, anywhere across Melbourne or the Mornington Peninsula, I'd love for you to know that it's entirely possible to do it well, and to do it without carrying every part of it yourself.