Steps to buying property Down Under

If you have children studying in Australia and want to buy a property for your children there, or if you plan to buy property in Australia for investment purposes, the following steps -- contributed by Central Equity Limited, Raine and Horne and PT Procon Indah -- may be worth studying.

* Contact a property agent in Indonesia that offers Australian properties for Indonesia customers.

* Check out your options or alternative properties. Choose a suburb in the vicinity of your children's school if you are buying a property for your children. Choose the type of property, whether a house, a townhouse or an apartment, according to your budget.

* Site inspection. You can do it yourself, or you can entrust your children there to inspect it, or you can appoint authorized personnel to check it for you.

* Sign a booking letter only to hold the property for you for one or two weeks, depending on the availability of the property.

* Sign and exchange of the fixed-price sales contract.

* Transfer 10 percent deposit of the sale price to the legislated trust account in Australia. Then pay nothing more until the building is complete. There are no progress payments.

* At settlement, you can either pay the 90 percent balance in cash or pay partially in cash and partially borrow it from an Australian bank.