Home Loan & associated costs

HI All,

After input from anyone who has purchased a house here. I've got a bank appointment this week so hopefully most of our questions will be cleared up then but always good to get your input!

We've spoken to one bank and we'll be considered as foreigners until we've lived here for 2 years and so we need the home loan would be 30/70 as opposed to the 10/90.

I understand we'll need a notary, architect and possibly agent but are there other people we'd need to use to complete the purchase? Anyone know roughly the prices for the architects home inspection? Again the bank advised that they would send their architect as we're foreigners so we'd just pay them. Not sure if that's aimed to protect us or fleece us!

Is there a typical period that the promise of sale is for? i.e 1 month, 6 months? We want to move-in in about 6 months. The misses will call some agents tomorrow to see if its too early to start looking.

Also anyone know if the no stamp duty for first time buyers is to be extended in the next budget and if it applied to foreigners? I haven't this information clearly explained anywhere.

Thanks in advance
Tim