10 Mistakes When Purchasing a Property Which Can Be Avoided - Part 6 - Making Property Enquiries

 10 MISTAKES WHEN PURCHASING A PROPERTY WHICH CAN BE AVOIDED

Part 6 – Property inquiries

Sydney-based legal practice Checkbox Legal will assist you to avoid or minimise complications which arise when purchasing real estate. We helped many of our clients to avoid multiple pitfalls in the process and now ready to share our knowledge with you.

PROPERTY INQUIRIES

In our previous publication we discussed obtaining finance for your purchase and pointed out the importance of working with your mortgage broker to have it ready by settlement.

As you are completing your loan application forms provided to you by your broker (or directly by lender), there is much going on behind the scenes.

Your solicitor or conveyancer orders multiple documents (also called certificates) with the purpose of determining what money is owed on the property by the vendor and to prepare a document called settlement adjustment sheet.

The document sets out the agreed price of the property, the amount you have already paid to vendor’s agent as a deposit, and then adds or deducts amounts owed by the vendor by way of council rates, strata contributions, water rates and in some cases, land tax levies.

This is done to ensure all payments are accounted for and apportioned to each party depending on where the proposed settlement date fits into various payment periods.

These certificates will cost several hundred dollars (at the time of writing of this article) and the cost of them may need to be paid by you on top of conveyancing fees quoted to you in the beginning of the matter. These costs are called disbursements and your solicitor by now would have explained and quoted them in.

Inevitably, the final price you would be required to pay for the property will change because of these adjustments. The difference between what you thought the price was and what you would be required to pay could be several hundred dollars or more.

Needless to say, you should have enough funds either saved or borrowed to finance that difference in price.

Conclusion: read the settlement adjustment sheet provided to you by your solicitor or conveyance carefully, ask for explanations and budget for more funds that you expected to pay.

As always, we remind that we at Checkbox Legal provide not only residential and commercial conveyancing services, but also act for our clients in a variety of other legal matters - check out our website for details.

Contact Checkbox Legal on our phone number 0410 64 54 53 or sent us an email.

Regards

Andre Petrov - Checkbox Legal.