What’s the second most important question to ask yourself before you buy property? We already know the first question, why are you buying? But what’s the second most important question and why is it important? Asking why is not enough.

You can ask why, but what does that mean? What does it look like and what are you going to do with it? In this episode, I’ll share what that second question is, plus I’ll give you the three steps that you need to create your own property buying strategies and go on to buy a property with your why in mind. This is the must Watch series before you get a home loan for a property that you will live in. This video is all about the second most important question to ask before you buy property.

What’s better than knowing why you want to buy doing something about it. The first video in this series asked you to think about your why. Why are you buying? It’s no good asking about your why if you can’t do anything with it. This is why it’s the second most important question.

I actually feel like the second most important question is slightly more important than the first question, but you have to ask the first question before you can get to the second question. So why is the second question so important? The second question will help you to strategize. It will help you to figure out what you’re actually going to do about it.

Let’s get straight into that second question.

The second most important question to ask yourself is: How?

Thinking about your why, how are you going to make that happen?

Asking how helps you to put strategies into place so that you can achieve your why.

When you take it to the next level and you stop to think about your how, you actually think about how you can make your why a reality, and you set up strategies for yourself to be able to achieve your why.

Now you are one of the very few people that actually get to this point when buying property.

Firstly, you’ve already asked yourself why, and now you’re asking yourself, well,

if that’s what I want, how can I achieve it? How can you make your why a reality when you move onto your, you set yourself up to achieve your property goals?

How am I going to achieve this big why question that I have. Let’s get straight into the most important points to think about. When you are thinking about your how, the first step to your how is to develop a strategy, you have your why for buying.

For us, we had two why’s. Our first reason was to buy a first home, something where we could get in and move on as soon as possible. And our second reason for buying was to buy something that would suit our family. But what could we do with that? Why? How can we actually use the why to create strategies that would help us to pay our home loan off faster? So going back to our first why, our first why was to buy a first home to get in and move on as soon as possible. Now, the only way that we could do this was to borrow as little money as possible to be able to pay it off faster.

Now you might ask, well, I could just buy anything that I could afford. Just pay it off as I go, pay the minimum repayments and at the end of 10 years, the property would’ve grown in price, so I’ll just gain from the market value anyway. Why do I need to pay it off faster?

That’s a really good question.

A lot of people just get in and just buy the most expensive house they could possibly afford.

But the thing that I’ve seen most in this situation is that people overspend and when they overspend, they end up getting stuck, stuck in a property that they can’t get out of because they haven’t paid enough to be able to buy the next level home.

They’re stuck and they end up staying where they are, not because they want to, but because they can’t afford to move elsewhere. And that’s not all you end up saving next to nothing and it makes it very difficult to move on to your next property sooner. There are no guarantees that a market will increase. Sometimes it gets stuck. Sometimes some areas actually don’t increase. They actually go down in value.

It’s something you hope will happen that you expect to happen because over time properties have risen in price, but it doesn’t mean it will actually happen by the time that you’re ready to move on to your next property.

And then when you move on to your next property, those property prices have also risen.

So yours has risen, yes, but those property prices have risen as well, and that’s how you end up stuck.

Another reason why it’s really important not to overspend is so that you can have the money going to you and not to interest when you make your repayments. Some of your repayments will go to interest and some of your repayments will go to the principle.

The interest is the amount that you pay to your bank that you’ll never see again.

So this is like the fees that you pay to borrow the money and the principle that’s the part that’s actually paying your home loan off.

When you borrow as much as you could possibly borrow and you buy something that’s the most expensive property that you could buy, your repayments end up going majority to interest, especially in the initial years.

Most of that money is going to the bank and it’s not going to paying off your mortgage. When you borrow as little as possible to buy the property that you want to buy, you capitalize on the repayments and you are able to pay more off your principle than the interest that you pay to the banks. Your money goes further when you borrow less and you smash out that home loan. So to do this for our first why we borrowed as little as possible and our how became we had to set ourself a price limit.

Now, before you say, I already have a price limit, go and watch episode number eight in this series. That’s not a price limit. This is a price limit to see what’s setting up a price limit really is.

So for us, our first why was to buy a first home to get in to move on as soon as possible, and then we asked ourselves how, how are we going to be able to do that?

And this led to us creating our first strategy, which was to set ourselves a price limit. So our second why was to buy something that suited our family and our strategy became to buy something with a patch of grass in a safe neighborhood. So that is the first step of your how you create a strategy based on your why. Now, the second step to your how is a little bit different Now there’s no point in asking why and then going and looking at all the properties that you used to look at or going and looking at the most expensive properties you got, it’s really important to take a step back and think about the properties that you are looking at when you are looking at the properties online. Before you go to the properties, ask yourself, is this within my why range? Now, if you haven’t got your why yet, just go back to the first video in this series. This is the tricky part.

If you think about it and you are really honest with yourself, some of those houses or properties that you are looking at might not actually be the houses in your why range. As soon as you look at the more expensive houses, guess what?

They will be bigger, they will be better, and you will want to have them. It is time to get strategic and it’s time to think about what you are actually looking at.

Are there properties that you’ve been looking at that don’t meet your why?

That’s why it’s really important to get down to your why.

Why are you buying? Rather than looking at everything you can afford, save yourself the time of searching for anything in your price range. Get it down to only those properties that are in your why range. We were going to open homes for two years before we actually bought a property, and one of the reasons why we actually bought was because we really thought about what is it that we are looking for? Why are we here? Why are just looking at open home after open home after open home? And are they really suitable for us? Those properties?

When we took a step back and we thought about our why, why do we wanna buy?

And we thought about our how we actually changed everything we did. When we started searching for properties, we stopped looking at all the properties we thought we could afford and we started thinking about, well, are they meeting our why?

When we looked at our why, we actually completely changed the areas in which we looked at and we bought something that was over an hour’s drive from our favorite location. If this is our why, then how are we going to make it happen?

If we need to move somewhere else, if we need to look in a different location, if we need to think a bit broader and we need to think differently about why we are buying or what we are looking for, then that’s what we are going to do.

And that’s what we did. And as soon as we started thinking about why we wanted to buy, we had a property within a month. So the third and last step of the how is to adapt. Now, if you find that you are actually not looking at enough properties or there’s not much of a range within your why range and you wanna open it up a little bit further, then it’s okay to review your why and to think about it a bit more broadly, be willing to adapt to your why. If it’s not meeting your needs, it’s okay to change your why or slightly tweak it or do something different to search for something that you really want. It doesn’t have to be a strict why you can change it and adapt it to suit your needs. And of course, when you move on to your next property, your why will change anyway. So our why for our second property was not to have something we could pay off Within five years.

We wanted something in our favorite location and we wanted to buy something that would be cheaper than renting. At the time that we bought our second property, the interest that we would pay on the home loan was actually cheaper than it was to rent. We knew that we wouldn’t be able to buy a house in our favorite location and be able to pay it off in five years. House prices were just too expensive and we couldn’t afford it. We didn’t have the income for that. So we set ourselves a goal of a bit over 10 years and that’s how we bought our second property. Our why was different. We wanted to buy a house in our favorite location that was cheaper than renting.

Adapt to your why as you go. If you find your why is not working for you, then it’s okay to review your why and think about what else you might want because it is a property that you’re buying for yourself after all, and you are the one that’s going to be paying for it. It has to suit your situation. Get to a place where you can say, yes, these properties meet my why range. You narrow your focus on what you’re looking for and you stop looking at everything. And once you have set your why, revisit your why again and again and again. Go back to your why. Ask yourself how and develop and refine until you find what you are looking for. If you are serious about buying in the next six to 12 months and you’d like to work directly with me to help you create a plan specifically for your situation, comment below with the word wait list to make it happen.

We moved on to buying our second property pretty quickly, and the only reason why we were able to do that was because we stuck with our why on buying our first property. We got in, we moved on as soon as possible. It sets you up to only look at those properties within your why range, and it helps you to not overspend on a property. So what’s next when you start with your why, and then think about how are you going to make that happen? You are ready for the two next most important questions that will put you in control of your home loan.

Now, you might be thinking, I’ve just had two most important questions. Yes, you have. It’s really important to ask why, and it’s really important to follow that up with how are you going to achieve that.

Next up in episode three of this series, I will unpack two very important questions to ask yourself before you buy your next property. That will help you put you in control of your home loan before you go, because you’ve made it to the end, I would like to show my thanks with an exclusive offer for you. I launched Money Shape Up in 2025, and each month in 2025, I’m giving away a free copy of my book. Pay It in five. If you’d like to win a copy, click on the link in the description and tell me what it was about this video that made you stay to the end. I believe in sharing knowledge and resources, and I love hearing stories on how this helps you.

Happy house hunting and see you again in just a moment.