Should You Buy Your First Home in Corio Now, or Wait for the Market to Crash?

I've lost count of the number of first-home buyers who've asked me about timing the Corio market. They've read the doomsday headlines, heard a mate at work swear prices will fall another twenty percent, and now they're frozen. I get it. Buying your first home is terrifying.

But here's what I've learned after three decades around Geelong property: you cannot reliably predict where prices are headed. Not me, not the economists. Markets move in cycles, sure, but the timing of those cycles is only obvious in the rear-view mirror.

I remember a young couple in early 2019. They were renting in Norlane and had saved a decent deposit. They found a solid three-bedroom brick veneer in Corio on a big block. It needed a bit of paint, but it was liveable. The asking price was $385,000. A friend told them the market was about to crash, so they waited. That house sold within a week. Two years later an almost identical house on the same street went for $490,000.

Now, I'm not a financial adviser, so I won't tell you what to do. But I can tell you what I've observed. The people who bought homes they could afford and planned to live in for five or more years rarely regretted it, even when the market dipped. The people who waited for the 'perfect' time often ended up paying more, or they kept paying rent while the goalposts moved.

One term you'll hear a lot is capital growth. That's just the increase in a property's value over time. Another is negative equity, which is when you owe more on the mortgage than the home is worth. Negative equity only becomes a real problem if you're forced to sell during a downturn. If you're buying to live in long-term, a temporary drop of five or ten percent shouldn't change your life. You still need a roof, and you're still paying down your loan.

When I managed rental properties, I saw the same fear in renters. They'd say, 'I'll wait until the market settles.' But rent never settles. It rises. In Geelong, the rental vacancy rate has been incredibly tight for years. If you're paying rent while you wait, that money is gone. It doesn't build equity, it doesn't come back.

What actually matters is affordability and time horizon. If you can comfortably make the repayments even if interest rates rise a bit, and you plan to stay put for at least five years, then a short-term price dip is just noise. The other thing is whether you genuinely like the house and the area. If you love Corio — the space and the proximity to Geelong's northern suburbs — then that's worth something too. You can't put a price on coming home to a place that feels like yours.

Stamp duty is another cost to factor in. That's a state government tax on property transfers. In Victoria, first-home buyers can get a concession or exemption, but the rules and thresholds change. If you're waiting for prices to fall, remember that stamp duty is often calculated on the purchase price. A lower price might mean lower duty, but it might also mean you miss out on a place you love. Don't let that be the deciding factor.

I've also noticed a pattern among first-home buyers who later become accidental landlords. They buy a first home, live in it for a few years, then upgrade and rent out the old place. If you buy in a suburb like Corio with steady rental demand, that old home can become a decent investment. But that's a different conversation. For now, the question is simpler: can you afford it, and do you want to live there?

If the answer to both is yes, stop waiting for the crash. The crash may come, or it may not. By the time everyone agrees the market has bottomed, the best buys are usually gone. Buy the home, fix the leaking tap, plant a lemon tree, and get on with your life.