gavem Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 Hi, me, my husband and little girl and eventually 2 small dogs are moving in September to Australia. We have sold our home in the UK and my husband is currently looking for work in Sydney. We are still unsure if to live in a flat in Sydney or move to Umina Beach, central coast, or Wollongong, where we would get a house, but my husband will have to commute...Major dilemma. If we were to live in Sydney we would like to move to coogee beach or Mosman, where we would probably be able only to rent, as it is so expensive. If we went for Wollongong or Umina, we would be able go afford to buy a house, but we were wondering if to buy a home without actually viewing it, so we can move in immediately including pets. Can anybody share their own experience and give us some advice? Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gbye grey sky Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 Welcome to the forum. I wouldn't dream of buying a house without having seen it more than once and without being in the country. Would be interested to hear if anyone on here ever has and can share the experience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ali Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 Not something I'd do to be honest, buying here is a little different, we had to do a final inspection which involved making sure everything worked (even taps and toilets). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gavem Posted April 18, 2014 Author Share Posted April 18, 2014 ok great. How long can it take to buy roughly? Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 I'd not buy before seeing. Also to ensure you like the area, that it has facilities that work for you and so much more. Buying blind leaves you open to so many things being wrong. I'd hate a house if it didn't work for me in terms of layout, kitchen design and flow, garden space and everything else you can think of from light into rooms to height of ceilings. You can find rentals with dogs. Might need a bit more legwork but it can be done. Give yourself time to settle in, get a feel for suburbs and where you want to be. Our house purchase is taking about 40 days all up from signing contract to settlement. Can be less, can be more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gavem Posted April 18, 2014 Author Share Posted April 18, 2014 anybody can give any advice or share any experiences of living in Figtree Wollongong and commuting into Sydney CBD? thanx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 anybody can give any advice or share any experiences of living in Figtree Wollongong and commuting into Sydney CBD? thanx If you've a Sydney or NSW specific question you may be better off posting in our NSW forum on here. That way people will see the area. Also head your subject line to include the area. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marisawright Posted April 19, 2014 Share Posted April 19, 2014 Hi, me, my husband and little girl and eventually 2 small dogs are moving in September to Australia. We have sold our home in the UK and my husband is currently looking for work in Sydney. We are still unsure if to live in a flat in Sydney or move to Umina Beach, central coast, or Wollongong Don't buy sight unseen, it's a huge risk. Especially as you're not sure where your husband will be working. Not all jobs are in the city. For instance, if he gets a job at Macquarie, commuting from Wollongong would be a nightmare (even to the city is 2 hours on the train, much longer by car). Whereas if he gets a job in Parramatta, commuting from Umina Beach would take hours. I'm not sure why you've picked Coogee Beach or Mosman, either. Both are very expensive areas. Coogee does have the beach - but if you're willing to live further out, why not go to Cronulla instead (just as nice a beach, just as many restaurants, and cheaper?). Even better, look at all the train stops between Cronulla and Mortdale - still a short drive to the beach but cheaper than beachside, good transport links and decent schools. Gymea and Oatley are lovely litle villages in their own right. As for Mosman - the North Shore generally is very expensive. People who live on the North Shore think it is heaven on earth and it is leafy with an exclusive/upper-class vibe, if that's what you're after. However that doesn't sound like you, if you're willing to live in Wollongong (I like Wollongong, personally, but it's definitely a working-class city). If your husband gets a job northside or in the city, you could consider Northern beachside suburbs like Dee Why - it is a lousy commute because there are no trains, but a lot better than coming from the central coast. There are lots of other options for suburbs, especially further west - but considering most Poms dream of a beach lifestyle, I always think it's worth going up or down the coast rather than inland if you can. If you get a house in a Western suburb like Castle Hill (where many young professional couples live), it's a good two hour drive to get to a beach! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
northshorepom Posted April 22, 2014 Share Posted April 22, 2014 I agree with Marisa, mostly Odd choice of places to live - Coogee/Mosman are worlds away geographically and demographically from the 'gong or Umina for that matter I also, strongly, agree that buying unseen is a massive risk anywhere, but particularly in a country you don't know. You have no idea if the location will work for you, how the legal system works, you can't see the property (and there's some real cr@p out there) or neighbourhood properly, you can't know how you will feel about the area, the city, even the country. I loathe renting, we've just bought after 2.5 years of doing so, could have bought sooner but I was hoping (successfully, as it turned out) that the exchange rate would turn in our favour so I didn't feel I was losing too much on bringing our UK capital over. It has made a huge difference to how settled we feel, but whilst we hated renting it was a necessary means to an end. More than anything else, it gives you the chance to "try before you buy" in terms of where you might want to live I also totally agree with the above poster about what the commute actually is being the important thing, which you can't know until you have work. I can't tell you not to live on the beach - it is many people's idea of life in Australia, even if it doesn't end up being that way for most - but I would try and sit down and work out what things are most important to you - is it space, is it the beach, is it the neighbourhood, is it the commute, that sort of thing. For us it was the commute, I had got into the 90 minutes e/w nonsense into London and it was such a waste of time (literally); I would only see my son on weekends as I left at 5.45am and got back around 7.30pm, and could never do any jobs around the house or have much in the way of proper discussion with my wife during the week as by the time I got home, changed, fed, we were too tired - so it all got compressed into the weekend. Priority one for life here was finding somewhere to live that got my commute below 30 mins and it's changed our lives as a family hugely for the better. That meant life on the beach wasn't a realistic option.....although as it happens we rarely go, I think maybe twice this summer (distance is no excuse, it's only 20-25 mins drive). My wife doesn't like the beach much as she is a redhead and doesn't like the sun, my son has little interest either. Disappointing for me as I love the sea air and the surf, can't see the sea without jumping in but I can't make them something they're not. I think the best thing to do is accept there will be a period of semi-limbo when you're renting and living in a more temporary way than you might like, but this is part of the transition. Moving here will turn your life upside down, more than you probably think, so giving yourself more forward choices as you go through the journey is a good thing. And spend some time working out as a family what's really important for you and then try and narrow down where you might live off the back of that. Research as much as you can, but bear in mind you can't research how you might feel about a place - it comes from the heart and you'll have to be here for that. I would caution against pushing yourself to the max in terms of rent (or perhaps pushing yourself to the min in terms of space) to get the "best" location. The problem with doing that is that if you do like it and start putting down roots - friends, kids happy in school and so on - then you'll struggle to ever be able to buy anything in the same area unless you've some headroom. So you can end up with the same "where to live and settling in" quandary as you started with before you came here. It works much better if you can stay in the same community if you like it when the time comes to make those roots deeper Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bromney Posted April 23, 2014 Share Posted April 23, 2014 Marisa makes some great points as do others. Make sure you see the properties before you buy as you may be disappointed with the build quality of some of the properties, majority I've seen are brick veneer which makes the walls feel very thin. Why not get your husband over first a few weeks ahead so he can at least sort out a rental and the like before you and the kids come over? Maybe a little bit less stress that way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akiralx Posted April 23, 2014 Share Posted April 23, 2014 Would you buy a house in the UK without seeing it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
northshorepom Posted April 23, 2014 Share Posted April 23, 2014 Would you buy a house in the UK without seeing it? I'd buy a new flat for investment purposes in a known development, in a location that was well-known to me, off a developer with a track record I wouldn't ever buy a home for myself without seeing it and understanding the area, nor would I ever buy any established property without having a good poke about. Anywhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wozziegirl Posted May 3, 2014 Share Posted May 3, 2014 Hi! We're in the UK and just a couple of months ago we bought a house on the other side of the world without actually being there to see it. (EEP!) Our situation is a bit different though. I'm an Aussie and grew up on the Central Coast. My family live at the northern end of the Coast so that's where we focussed our search. I've been in the UK for over 15 years and I've been told things have changed a lot in that time but at least I had an idea of what region we wanted to be in and what the area was like. From when we started looking online, it took close to 2 years to buy a home. We began by checking realestate.com weekly, although changed to every day when we saw how quickly houses were being sold. Some estate agents were really helpful and emailed us floor and land plans but some were real arsey and refused to even send us photos of bathrooms and kitchens because 'you don't need to see those to buy a house'! (FYI, that was The Property Market at Tuggerah. We even knocked back houses that we liked just because they were the agent. They were THAT horrible!). We knew what area, how many bedrooms and the minimum land size we wanted but apart from that it was just looking through thousands and thousands of properties for 'the one'. The most helpful thing for us was having family and friends to go and look at houses for us. Hearing what they liked or didn't like, taking photos without the real estate trickery of skewing the rooms to make them look bigger or taking extra photos/videos of things that weren't shown on the real estates page all helped give us a better picture of the property. If we didn't have family and friends to do that for us we probably wouldn't have been brave enough to buy before getting there. The actual process of buying from the other side of the world was challenging too. The speed at which houses seem to sell is just mad. We stayed awake all night with calls back and forward negotiating the price and getting our offer accepted. We'd transferred the deposit and were waiting for the agent to fill in some bits missed on the contract. At 4am the agent called to say that another staff member had put forward a higher offer and the vendor had accepted. Contracts and deposit were already sorted. We'd been gazumped! It was a horrible learning experience but we're glad it happened. The house that we did buy is so much nicer :-) We found it helped to have some money in an Australian bank account. It means we were ready to transfer the deposit as soon as the offer was accepted and we'd signed the contract. No waiting around for international transfer delays. Also, have your finance sorted before you put in an offer. Us having that sorted made the difference in the vendor accepting our offer over another for the same amount. Even with me knowing the area and having people check out the houses for us, this was still the most stressful and intense thing we have ever done. Now that it's all sorted we are really excited to know where we'll be living. I agree with the other posters though. You're looking at such a wide range of places to live so it'd be better to rent in the short term while you get a better picture of the areas and see where your husband ends up working. You should be able to get a rental that allows pets. Are you or your husband Australian? If neither of you are, you'd have to get FIRB (Foreign Investment Approval Board) approval before you can buy a house from the UK. Here's their website... http://www.firb.gov.au/ Good luck with whatever you choose to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
northshorepom Posted May 3, 2014 Share Posted May 3, 2014 Are you or your husband Australian? If neither of you are, you'd have to get FIRB (Foreign Investment Approval Board) approval before you can buy a house from the UK. Here's their website... http://www.firb.gov.au/ You are OK as a permanent resident too: Fourth bullet point http://www.firb.gov.au/content/Exemptions/exemptions.asp We needed FIRB approval (temporary visa) but it was a formality. During our house search I found it typically took 1-3 days to come through, the market moves so fast that often isn't quick enough if you leave it until you've had an offer accepted, you'll need to exchange faster than that (in Sydney). But talked to FIRB and learned that you can put in as many applications on as many properties as you like, it's just that (as a temporary resident) you can only actually buy one established property. So in the end as soon as we shortlisted something, before we even viewed it, we were applying for the approval to save time. Wasn't a problem, it's free and a fairly simple online form Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wozziegirl Posted May 3, 2014 Share Posted May 3, 2014 Good point northshorepom. I hope you're happy in your new home. :-) We spoke with a lovely chap at FIRB about our situation (we were initially just going to buy in hubby's name) and he reassured us that it was just a formality. If hubby's visa had been granted it would've been even easier. We found that ANY delay made buying from the UK harder, but not impossible. You just have to really keep up with new listings. We'd wait until after work to check out new listings and then phone Oz later that night. By that time the property had been on the market for near 24hrs and by the time we phoned, the property was already under contract. At times it was dispiriting but then when we did get our home it was all the more sweeter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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