Property conveyancing may seem like a straightforward process, but when you are the one selling or buying a property, you realize how complex it can be. After you have found your ideal property, negotiated the price, and possibly had your offer accepted, the next step is the exchange of contracts. This is when property conveyancing starts formally, and there is still room for the deal to fall through; but this is the stage where everything gets set in stone, and the legal work must begin.
Conveyancing refers to the process of transferring ownership of a property from one person to another. This may be a long and tiring process, but it is always easier if you are fully aware of what it involves.
Contents
What Happens The Moment Contracts Are Exchanged
The exchange is the stage in the process at which the contract becomes legally binding for both the buyer and the vendor, provided the property is being bought with vacant possession. Before exchange, your solicitor or conveyancer will have negotiated the terms of the contract on your behalf and gone through it with you to make sure you understand everything. There will still be several things you won’t yet know the answers to, such as exactly what’s included in the sale, but you will be committing to the terms and conditions you have agreed to.
You are also responsible for insuring the property immediately upon exchange, as anything that happens to the property now will be your responsibility. The cooling-off period that comes after exchange gives you time to get these answers and make sure you have them.
The Six-Week Timeline, Broken Down By Week
A typical settlement is expected to run for about six weeks from exchange, but your terms may specify a different length of time. Here’s how that approx. 42 days are usually divided:
Week one is about cementing the fundamentals: the cooling-off period elapsing, the 66W obtainment or expiration, cooling-off waiver notification due to the vendor’s terms, unconditional finance approval or termination of the contract due to insufficient funds, and any building and pest resolutions or contract termination.
Week three is when the last administrative necessities come together. The seller’s conveyancer should be in touch with the seller’s lender asking for a formal discharge authority which states the bank has no claim over the property. Any late discovered caveat, i.e. an application to the government requesting an interest in the property (also often an old family matter or missed debt), should be notified and removed now, not one week prior. Title searches should be run again to check nothing has changed since exchange.
The final week is when settlement gets real. The purchaser’s bank demands final payout figures from the seller’s bank. The settlement agent calculates the adjustments. The banks swap cheques electronically based on the platform’s previously agreed settlement date. The settlement agent sums up down to the cents and lands a final bill in each of your inboxes. This is when you should book your final inspection and get ready for the house you’re going to own in seven days.
How Settlement Actually Works Now
Today, over 90% of property transactions settle electronically. Both the buyer’s funds and the seller’s title transfer at the same time via electronic lodgement with the bank, a process coordinated by both the buying and selling conveyancers in real time. This eliminates the handing over of a physical cheque and all the timing risk associated with one party trusting the other to complete the transfer soon after settlement day.
With that level of risk off the table, for most buyers the first time you know the deal is done is when you get the call from your conveyancer. They’ll let you know that the property transfer has gone through and the keys are now yours. Once the transfer is registered, the buyer becomes the new legal owner under the Torrens Title system, which guarantees that title is accurate and enforceable. This is called indefeasibility of title, and it’s the reason a registered buyer doesn’t need to worry about some earlier defect in the ownership chain coming back to bite them later.
Even when the property transfer has gone through, you’ll often have a few more calls on your pocket calculator to find out the rate for things with the word “removalist” in the title. Plus there’ll be a bunch of other stuff to organize. But at this stage, at least the dwelling itself is yours. Or at least the bank’s.
What The Buyer Needs To Have Sorted Before Settlement Day
It is important to have insurance coverage from the date the contract is executed, since, in legal terms, risks are transferred to the buyer sooner than many believe. This guarantees that if the property burns down between the exchange and settlement, the responsibility is still with the buyer, according to standard contracts. The final inspection, which is normally carried out in the days prior to the settlement, is the opportunity for the buyer to ensure that the property complies with what was agreed. The property should have the same equipment, be in the same state, with nothing removed that shouldn’t have been removed.
The funds should be ready to be sent through the bank, or even more usual, via electronic transfer, and must arrive on time. If the funds are delayed by the buyer, interest penalties could apply, which are about 8-10% higher than the interest rate for each day the settlement is delayed.
What The Seller Needs To Have Sorted Before Settlement Day
Sellers have their own list, and it’s easy to assume settlement is something you just show up to. It isn’t. The discharge authority from the seller’s own lender has to be requested early and confirmed before settlement, because if the mortgage isn’t ready to be discharged, the sale can’t complete even if the buyer is fully ready on their end. Transfer documents need to be signed in advance. Any statutory notices or certificates required by law – smoke alarm compliance, pool safety certificates depending on the property, that sort of thing – need to be supplied on time.
And if there’s a caveat on the title from an old loan, a dispute, or a family matter, it has to be formally removed before settlement can proceed. Sellers are often surprised at how much of this sits with them rather than with the buyer.
This is also the point in the process where the sheer number of moving parts becomes obvious. The buyer’s lender, the seller’s lender, both conveyancers, and the revenue office all need to line up on the same day. For anyone selling or buying locally, working with a conveyancing practice that already knows the area’s title quirks and local council requirements makes this coordination considerably smoother. Local firms such as Lauren Guy Conveyancing in Hornsby handle this kind of settlement routinely, which is often the difference between a settlement that runs on time and one that needs an extra week of chasing paperwork.
The Costs That Make The Final Figure Higher Than The Sale Price
Buyers are often taken by surprise at just how much is added to the top of the purchase price come settlement time. The transfer duty (formerly known as stamp duty) is usually the largest of these, a state government tax calculated as a percentage of the purchase price. On top of that, there are title registration fees, title search fees, and settlement administration fees that vary depending on which body is handling the settlement. Then come the settlement adjustments – council rates, water rates, and (for strata properties) strata levies are all paid in advance by the owner and recouped when the property is sold, meaning the buyer has to reimburse the seller for the portion that covers the time they’ll own the property. These payments can add thousands (or even tens of thousands for monthly-strata apartments) to the purchase price.
Adjustments are the reason the amount that physically changes hands on settlement day is never the nice round figure listed on the contract of sale.
Off-the-plan buyers have additional costs and risks. In addition to coughing up a bigger load of cash upfront as a deposit, many contracts have sunset clauses that allow the developer to rescind the deal if construction hasn’t been completed by a certain date – stranding you, if settlement looms and it turns out your apartment is still a sand-pit.
Where Settlements Actually Go Wrong
Many settlements fail for one of a few key reasons. A not-removed or identified-in-time caveat is one of the biggest culprits – it’ll simply prevent settlement until it is. The same goes for a delayed mortgage discharge – often the case when a seller’s lender is tardy in submitting it. Wrong payout figures from a lender can sometimes derail the whole process, because they must balance to the cent between both parties.
And if any of these circumstances lead to a delayed settlement, the party at fault can expect to cough up penalty interest, often thousands of dollars even over a day or two.
How These Problems Get Caught Before They Become A Crisis
None of the failures above are exotic – they’re the same handful of issues turning up again and again across thousands of settlements. What separates a settlement that limps to the finish line from one that collapses a day out isn’t how serious the underlying problem is, it’s how early someone spotted it.
This is where a conveyancer’s routine familiarity with the process matters. They chase the discharge authority in week one instead of week five. They know what a clean title search looks like, so they notice straight away when one isn’t. And because they’re in regular contact with the other side’s conveyancer and both banks, most looming problems get flagged and resolved as a phone call rather than a crisis – most settlement failures are really coordination failures between parties who weren’t talking to each other early enough.
None of this makes a settlement bulletproof. But it’s the difference between finding a problem with three weeks to fix it, and finding it on the morning of settlement with no time left at all.
Why DIY Conveyancing Rarely Saves What People Think It Saves
Depending on where you reside, you can legally undertake your own conveyancing when buying something simple. A few people do. However, the time and effort we know calling in an expert saves you doesn’t change when you’re buying. The same traps are there when you’re selling – except this time, you’re the one left scrambling for solutions if they snap shut. Missed a disclosure requirement, misread a special condition, settlement adjustment written up wrong – any of those will easily cost, often more than a professional would have. Sometimes enough to void a contract clause, or spark a dispute that blows out over months.
Settlement isn’t complicated once you know the order things happen in. It’s just unforgiving of missed steps. Knowing where you are in the sequence – and who’s responsible for the next move – is most of what it takes to get through it without a last-minute scramble.
