Conveyancing – Are you buying a property in Brisbane?
What do you need to know? Watch this video for 5 important tips when buying a property in Queensland!
Conveyancing Lawyers, we are!
It is an important step in your life, isn’t it? Inspecting hundreds of properties, negotiating the price and, now – finally – you need to sign a contract for your new home or your new investment property.
You now have yourself a Conveyancing matter!
Do you see a lawyer first, or your bank first? When should I involve my solicitor? Shoud you use a Conveyancing Law Firm, or a Conveyancing company?
We’ll try to answer some of these questions here.
Read on! We know, we care, and we deliver with love.
What Conveyancing Service do you need?
The contract can be difficult to understand. What are your rights? How can you be protected? As your lawyer, we are here to guide you and protect your rights.
You need an effective Conveyancing service from a Lawyer for your purchase. You are not buying a phone, but instead you’re buying a house, or an apartment, or unit, or land to build on!
It’s an asset that is worth hundreds of thousands!
Conveyancing consists of a lot of procedural things, but in addition to that, it involves a number of legal areas too.
Use the Enquiry form on the right hand side to ask us any questions!
Your Lawyer should do these in Conveyancing
Here are some of the many things that your Conveyancing Lawyer should do for you:
- Review your contract and explain to you the legal concepts in Conveyancing
- Explain to you the difference between “Joint Tenancy” and “Tenancy in Common”
- Draft legal clauses and conditions in your contract to protect your interests
- Go through your options of ownership, such as buying in personal capacity, or under a company, or family trusts
- List out the different Property Searches that you can do
- Make settlement adjustments
- Attend settlement
- Lodge transfer duty (stamp duty) for you
These are only a few things your Conveyancing Lawyer should do for you.
In additional to these, they should also be able to explain to you whether you need to draw a Will or put in place an Enduring Power of Attorney, since you are attaining major assets.
Moreover, there are some strategic legal decisions that you have to make, under advice by your lawyer.
Review your Purchase Contract
We recommend that you appoint a lawyer to review your contract before you sign it.
It is much easier (and cheaper) to make sure the contract is correct before you sign it, than to change a signed contract after an error is found. This is because once you sign the contract, it’s becomes legal document and sometimes it’s not easy to change a legal document.
Order a Current Title Search before you sign the contract. There are many important things that a Current Title Search can reveal. One example is whether the contract is subject to any encumbrances or administrative orders from a Court or Tribunal.
Make sure your names are spelt correctly in the contract. Check if the property details are inserted accurately in the contract, as it is not uncommon that they might be mistakes here and there. Your lawyer will check these for you.
How long is settlement? We’ve seen quite a lot of impractical settlement periods in contracts that are already signed. Some of them are so impractical that it causes the buyer to potentially be in breach of the contract. Lawyers can fix these but it can sometimes be costly, and sometimes there are errors that may not be possible to fix.
Is your purchase contract subject to the sale of your current property? Ask your lawyer to draft a legal clause into the contract to protect you.
Contract Conditions
In most situations, there would be conditions under the contract that you need to satisfy. For example, Finance condition and the Building and Pest Inspection condition.
Our conveyancing lawyers and professional team will explain these conditions to you in detail.
We will liaise with your bank or financier to ensure that we satisfy the Finance condition. We will also review your Inspection Report to reveal any defects of the property.
Property Searches
It is important that you carry out appropriate searches to reveal important information regarding the property. In Queensland, you do these searches after you have signed the contract.
Many people always ask why there are always “additional fees” on top of a fixed fee.
Yes, we understand that most people prefer fixed fees (me too!), and it is true that our Conveyancing fees are fixed. However, what is not fixed is the searches you would like to do for your property.
Let us explain more.
In most cases, you will only carry out the most useful searches. Some very popular searches include (but are not limited to):
- Title search (this is essential. If you are seeking finance, you need 2 title searches.)
- Plan search (essential)
- Special Water Meter Reading search
- Rates search
- Land Tax Clearance search
- Body Corporate search
But, on top of these “common” searches, there are many, many, many more searches that you, as a new owner, can elect to carry out.
If you wish to understand more, contact us or ask us using the Enquiry Form on the right hand side.
Search Examples
For example, a vegetation protection order search, which reveals whether the Council has put in place any restrictions on a piece of land to protect certain types of plants. Not everyone wants to do this search, but if you want to do this search, there is a charge by the relevant authority (not us!).
Another good example is a development approval search. You may want to find out whether a certain land improvement (i.e. a built structure, for example a granny flat, a pergola, or an extension) is illegally built. Or, in some cases, build something you want based on an approved council development.
Some of these extra searches are inexpensive (under $100), and some are more expensive (over $200). It is therefore impossible to provide a “fixed fee” in these searches.
Remember, most of the seaches are optional. You determine yourself (under advice by lawyers) which searches you want to do.
Settlement Adjustments
Upon receiving the results of the Property Searches, your settlement adjustments will be calculated in a Settlement Statement.
Some very common settlement adjustments include (but are not limited to):
- Mortgage release
- Water and Rates adjustments
- Land Tax
- Body Corporate
- Repairs deductions
- Bank fees
The reason why this needs to be done is to adjust, for example, the volume of water used by the seller, so that you do not pay for what you have not used.
Another example is this.
When we, or your bank (if you have one), register your property with the Titles Office under your name (after settlement), we need to first get rid the seller’s mortgage (if there’s one). This procedure is done by the purchaser’s lawyers (or bank, if you have one). We will have to pay a fee to the Titles Office in order to ‘get rid’ of the seller’s mortgage from the Title, before we can register your name as a new owner.
However, it is the seller’s mortgage, not your mortgage. The seller should be paying this, not you. We therefore adjust the purchase price in your favour ahead of time, so that you are not losing out on the mortgage release fee.
Attending Settlement
You do not need to attend a settlement – you shouldn’t have to! Your lawyer will send an agent to settle your conveyancing for you.
In more complex settlements, we may send a lawyer to attend settlement for you. This depends on the circumstance.
But straight after settlement happens, your lawyer should notify you of the successful settlement, and you can collect the property keys from your real estate agent.
When you collect your keys for your new home, remember to also collect any remote controls, alarm access codes and anything that the seller might leave behind for you.
And after that, enjoy your new home!
Stamp Duty (or more formally – Transfer Duty).
You need to lodge your Stamp Duty with the Commissioner of State Revenue. But in fact, your lawyer should be able to do all this for you.
Transfer duty (previously known as stamp duty) application must be lodged before the deadline, otherwise a penalty tax will incur. We will submit your transfer duty application before the deadline and liaise with you to make prompt payment of the Stamp Duty.
We are a Stamp Duty Self-Assessor Law Firm and we will internally assess your Stamp Duty amount for you. We will advise you whether you are eligible for a concession, which is a discount of the Stamp Duty amount.
Use our Stamp Duty Calculator to estimate the amount of Stamp Duty payable by you.
Get a quote from us!
Please contact us on 07 3344 2888 and speak to our Conveyancing Team for a quotation. Or you can email us at info@timeslawyers.com.au.
We will carry you through your conveyancing journey!