Remittances fund a very large share of Pakistani property, and overseas buyers carry a structural disadvantage in every transaction: they cannot stand on the site, they cannot walk into the authority’s office, and they are relying on someone at home to do both.
Sellers know this. Some price it in. A few depend on it.
The person you send is the decision
Everything else follows from this. Choose someone who has no relationship with the seller, no commission riding on the purchase, and no reason to smooth anything over. A relative who is friends with the dealer is the wrong person, however much you trust them personally.
Give them a written list of what to check and ask for photographs of each item, taken by them, with visible date stamps. Not forwarded images — photographs they took.
What to insist on
- A live video call from the site, not a recording. Ask the person holding the camera to turn around, walk to the road, and pan. Recordings can be old; a live call cannot.
- Independent verification of the approval. Your person goes to the authority alone, with the reference number, and confirms it. Not a meeting the seller arranges.
- The instrument, reviewed by your own lawyer in Pakistan. Your lawyer, engaged by you, paid by you. Not one recommended by the seller.
- Payment through banking channels, to the company. Never to an individual, never in cash through an intermediary, and never to an account in a different name from the company you are contracting with.
- A receipt for every payment, with a reference you can verify yourself from wherever you are.
- A properly drawn power of attorney, if someone will sign on your behalf — attested through the correct consular route, and limited in scope. A general power of attorney is a serious instrument to hand anyone.
- Dated construction photographs on a regular schedule, from fixed positions. This is your only way to know whether a project is moving.
Traps particular to buying from abroad
- The exchange-rate close. Urgency built around a currency movement. A genuine opportunity survives you taking a week.
- The special overseas price. A price different from the published one, in either direction, is a reason to look harder, not a favour.
- The trip-timed decision. Being asked to decide during a two-week visit home, with paperwork produced on the last day.
- Instalments that outlive your attention. Three years of payments from abroad need someone checking each one lands on your file. Set that up before the first payment, not after the tenth.
What we do about it
Prices are published, so there is nothing to negotiate at a distance and no separate overseas sheet. Every receipt carries a QR code you can verify from anywhere. The approval, the instrument and the objections are all on the website, so your lawyer can read them without asking us for anything.
And we will do a live call from the site whenever you want one, with whoever you want on it. If a seller will not do that, ask yourself why.