Purchasing property overseas: An Australia-Britain experience

As I have mentioned, one of our significant 2012 events was the purchase of a flat in south-east London. Purchasing property anywhere is a big milestone, and doing it from the other side of the world was quite an adventure. I have wanted to blog about our experiences because we struggled to find much online to guide the process. There was plenty on the process of buying in Britain, but nothing on buying in Britain when you don't actually live there. Some of my points are going to be UK specific, but some should generalise to other countries too. I do understand that this post may be irrelevant to many of you, so if it's outside your area of interest I won't be offended if you skip over it and wait for a return to normal broadcasting tomorrow.

Before I get to the process of our purchase, let me put in context why we wanted to buy in London at all. Although we are hoping to move there in 12 months or so, that was only one factor in the decision. Instead, we focused on London because it was actually cheaper than Perth.

Let me explain.

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