Aussie investor living overseas interested in buying apartment in Sydney

Yep what do you want to know? My wife and I are in NY but have bought IP in Sydney while here.

We used Amanda Bennett to handle conveyancing (see below) and our mortgage is through St George (we had existing IP mortgage through them though which made it easy).

Basically apart from one agent who refused to allow us to bid over the phone we’ve never had an issue and as I’m buying in areas of Sydney I know very well and in strata units and not houses made it easier to judge the property remotely, though I did have a friend visit one apartment and Skype me from his phone when I was concerned about the condition of one apartment etc

Apart from having to dial in to speak with the agent live while an auction was happening and then wire transfer them the deposit (and send them a copy of the transfer details) if we won the only advice I can give you is if you can et the agent to do the bidding via Skype it makes it far easier as one of the places we bought was on a call and I found it harder than the previous time where we could see what was going on etc.

What else do you want to know?

Cheers,
Dean

Amanda Bennett
Principal
Licensed Conveyancer, JP

m: 0412 399 294
f: (02) 9475 0030
e: [email protected]

Hi Mani,

Yes Amanda from Elan Legal handled everything we needed as far as conveyancing remotely.

No we didn’t need to visit Australia.

Stewart Noble from MyLoanExpert was the mortgage broker we used for our last purchase in Dec 2016 which was financed through Westpac (the Narwee apartment I mentioned in 2015 above was through St George) and apart from needing to have the local consulate here in NYC authenticate our ID in person when we signed the mortgage documents, everything else was handled via email/phone.

I’m not sure what Amanda at Elan Legal charges for conveyancing for remote clients as we’ve bought a number of properties with her over the last few years but she charges us $1800 (that’s what we started with a while back and she’s always kept it the same for us).

Obviously this wont work for everyone but as we only buy strata units in suburbs I know well it saves us money not having to fly back each year.

Cheers,
Dean

manadeep wrote:

Hi Dean,

Thanks for your response. I am going to hit up Elan Legal once I have my plan somewhat firm.

Thank you again
Mani

Best of luck Mani – also bear in mind location and growth potential plus current cash flow when investing from overseas. I often talk to expat clients plus the occasional foreign investor under FIRB rules it is a little more tricky to get a sense of the market accurately from away but despite a few extra hoops to jump through not impossible.