How to get home loan documents certified or witnessed when living overseas

If you are living overseas you will be required to provide certified witnessed copies of ID and certain other supporting documents when making a home loan application to purchase an Australian property. Depending on the State of Australia you are purchasing in, you may also be required to have your signature on the mortgage document itself witnessed by an authorised person.

Who can certify/witness the documents?

1. Lawyer,
2. Notary public,
3. Consular official,
4. JP or CDEC,
5. Police officer if in Australia

What are the requirements for a document to be satisfactorily certified?

It is not just sufficient that the document is certified, we also need to be able to confirm that the person who has certified the document is who they say they are. To ensure this is the case;

1. An Australian solicitor needs to provide full name and State of Australia they are registered in (MAP can then do a search of the records to confirm),
2. JP/CDEC needs to provide their registration number so MAP can conduct a search,
3. A Notary is to provide full name etc so we can do a search on the public register,
4. A lawyer in a common law country is to provide full name so we can do a search on the public register,
5. Consular official to use appropriate stamp.

Scanned or emailed copies will be sufficient to get your home loan approved, but original certified copies will be required by post prior to settlement (generally you will just post them back with the formal mortgage documents so no extra post required).

This process applies to Australian expats as well as 482 visa holders and other temporary residents purchasing from abroad. If you are not sure where to start, get in touch with us and we can walk you through the process step by step.