11 Hidden Costs First Home Buyers Miss (Australia 2026)

"First 6 months — AC broke down, toilet overflowed, water malfunction, roof leak. $17,000. No one warned me." That's a real comment from a Reddit user who got absolutely blindsided after settlement. And they're not alone — Finder's First Home Buyer report says 40% of first home buyers face unexpected costs averaging $5,290, and 1 in 3 had less than $10,000 left after settlement. The good news? These costs aren't random. They're predictable. And if you know what they are before you sign anything, you can budget for every single one. In this video Jayden walks through 11 real costs (plus one bonus) you need to know about when buying your first home in Australia — with specific 2026 amounts, real client stories, and how to reduce or avoid each one. Including: the $6,000 LMI secret most lenders won't tell you, the $72,000 inspection story that saved one buyer from disaster, and the one Queensland-specific insurance rule that catches almost everyone off guard. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⏱️ CHAPTERS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 00:00 The $17,000 surprise — why 40% of buyers get blindsided 00:53 Cost #1 — Stamp duty (and the bracket trap) 02:47 Cost #2 — Lender's Mortgage Insurance (the $6,000 secret) 04:09 Cost #3 — Conveyancing & PEXA fees 05:26 Cost #4 — Building & pest inspection (the $72K story) 06:51 Cost #5 — Settlement adjustments (the bill that arrives 2 days before) 08:15 Cost #6 — Home insurance from contract date (Queensland warning) 09:43 Cost #7 — Strata special levies (the invisible cost) 11:37 Cost #8 — Government registration & transfer fees 12:06 Cost #9 — Furniture & setup (the "empty house" problem) 13:29 Cost #10 — First-year emergency repairs 14:51 Cost #11 — Ongoing maintenance & the 1% rule 15:47 BONUS — Buyer's agent fees: worth it or not? 16:42 What's your situation? Drop a comment ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📚 My Free Resource Hub & Education Community 👉 https://go.huntergalloway.com.au/hub 🤝 Need home-buying help? Work with me: https://go.huntergalloway.com.au/free-assessment 📈 Find out your borrowing capacity today: https://www.huntergalloway.com.au/mortgage-calculator/ For more info https://www.huntergalloway.com.au/ DISCLAIMER: Full Disclaimer here – https://www.huntergalloway.com.au/youtube-disclaimer/ https://www.huntergalloway.com.au/mortgage-broker-brisbane/ For home loan enquiries https://www.huntergalloway.com.au/contact/ Find Jayden here: https://www.huntergalloway.com.au/free-assessment/ https://www.facebook.com/MortgageBrokerBrisbane/ https://www.huntergalloway.com.au/mortgage-broker-brisbane/ https://au.linkedin.com/in/jaydenvecchio T: 1300 088 065 E: https://www.huntergalloway.com.au/contact/ Mortgage Broker Brisbane - Hunter Galloway Head Office: Level 10, 179 North Quay, Brisbane QLD 4000 PO Box 12780, George Street Brisbane QLD 4003 CBD Office: Level 20, 300 Queen Street Brisbane, QLD 4000 Hunter Galloway are an Award Winning Mortgage Broker based in Brisbane. We help clients from our local area, Australia, and all over the world. We believe buying a home should be stress-free and uncomplicated, and we will work for you to make your dreams become reality. Next steps and settling your first home Our team here at Hunter Galloway is here to help you buy a home in Brisbane. Nathan & Joshua Vecchio are Senior Mortgage brokers who specialise in making your home journey easy. Unlike other mortgage brokers who are just one person operators, we have an entire team of experts to help make your home loan journey as simple as possible. If you want to get started, please get in touch and we can book a time that suits you – either a phone call information session or a face to face meeting (which doesn’t cost anything for you). https://www.huntergalloway.com.au/contact/ Hunter Galloway Finance Pty Ltd T/A Mortgage Broker Brisbane - Hunter Galloway ABN 20 605 252 926. Credit Representative 476903 is authorised under Australian Credit Licence 389328. Your full financial situation would need to be reviewed prior to acceptance of any offer or product.