Chinese buyers caught in a trap

The Australian

As a renowned teacher of English in China, Liu Jiabing planned well for his daughterÕs education. He chose a good university in Aus_tralia, helped her to get an offer to enrol next year, and bought an apartment in Melbourne that is due to settle next month. But now the apartment near Monash University that he bought off the plan for $600,000 is keeping him up at night. While Mr Liu sets about finding the money from friends and families to help make the down-_payment, AC Property, a Melboune-based property portal, has four or five calls every day from buyers who seek to resell their off-the-plan apartments after finding it hard to settle. ÒWe have been referring our clients to mortgage brokers to see if they can get alternative finance, but we havenÕt seen a single case of success so far,Ó said AC Property _director Esther Yong.