Buying Property from O/S

[tgarthe]

Hi all,

First time poster, been trawling the forums for a little while now and loving the amount of info on here.

Now I am in the unique/difficult situation of potentially buying property whilst overseas. At current I am working in Africa and get home every 3 months or so on break, but I feel it could prove difficult to finalise a purchase in 3 weeks.

So my thinking is that if I need to, I can setup my solicitor/parents as Power of Attorney's and appoint a buyer's agent once I'm ready to move?

Is there anything obvious I'm missing here??

Ta

 

[Propertunity]

So my thinking is that if I need to, I can setup my solicitor/parents as Power of Attorney's and appoint a buyer's agent once I'm ready to move?

Your thinking is perfectly sound.

If you need a mortgage, you should probably get all the pre-approvals in place before you go away too - so that the lender is ready for a formal application once your buyers agent finds the right property.

Make sure your attorney has your cheque book to write a cheque for the 5% or 10% deposit.

Also make sure that the POA you have drawn up gets registered at the courthouse (dept of lands in NSW) in the state where you intend purchasing. This is not necessary so much for an exchange of contracts which can be done with a non-registered POA, but if you are not here for the settlement it can be problematic and title cannot be transferred into your name. You can overcome this last issue if you are in a position to sign docs etc from O/S and courier them back in a timely manner.

 

[tgarthe]

Great adivce. Have a good relationship with banker, in the process of organising pre-aprroval now. Hadn't really thought about the deposit issue, good heads up!

Same process with registering with Dept of Lands (QLD). Was aware of that one, but better make a mental note to make sure that gets done! What are the costs re: this as haven't seen that displayed in my research? Probably will have no choice as I wouldn't bank on documents getting to/from here in a 'timely' manner!

Cheers again

 

[Propertunity]

What are the costs re: this as haven't seen that displayed in my research?

Not very much - a couple of $100's at most.

Probably will have no choice as I wouldn't bank on documents getting to/from here in a 'timely' manner!

Agreed. We have had significant delays getting documents from clients in Singapore, a place which I though had this sort of stuff pretty much together. I don't think I'd like to risk it from Africa.