Building a new home as a foreign investor

If you are looking to buy a home in Australia as a non-resident foreign investor you cannot purchase an established home. This is a regulatory mechanism to ensure that foreign real estate investment increases the amount of housing stock rather than creating inflationary pressure on housing prices.

Here are some things to keep in mind when looking to build a new house as an investment.

Is this a pure investment or are you hoping to move in to the property at some point?

If you are looking to move into the house at some point, plan for the items that may be important to you (close to people of your ethnic background, good public schooling, close to work or universities or proximity to the city centre). You can research the local school options on the government website My School.

Otherwise look for areas that have high rental returns and low numbers of rental properties, which you can find by looking at the real estate website or real estate institute in each state.

What kind of houses sell best in your area?

If you are building houses in newer suburbs, houses usually sell best with at least 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, whereas properties closer to the city are often smaller and have less bedrooms. You can either manually track property sales on the property website, or for a small fee you can get detailed suburb sales reports from many websites and real estate agencies.

Choose a new home builder with experience building for foreign investors

Choose a new home builder with experience building for foreign investors. Particularly, it is helpful to work with builders who are used to communicating by long distance clearly. If English is not your first language, it can be useful to look for a new home builder with native speakers of your language as the technical specifications of building plans can be challenging to translate even for comfortable second language speakers.

Check that your builder has experience in creating full investment ("turn key") properties, and ask to speak to previous buyers who have built turn key properties to ensure they were happy with the purchase. Many advertised new home packages do not include items such as backyard landscaping or window coverings and the absence of these can make a house challenging to rent or sell.

With some planning and research building a new home as a foreign investor can be an extremely profitable investment. For more information, contact a company like Jac Homes.