When To Engage a Conveyancer When Buying a House

Throughout the transaction the Conveyancer will need to order certain certificates to be able to complete the transaction, these certificates are known as your disbursements. You will need to clarify with the conveyancer as to which disbursements are included in the costs quoted. Some of the certificates that need to be ordered will not be covered in the quoted price and will be added to your account due at settlement.

As a purchaser of a property you are liable to pay the Council and Water rates from the day of settlement to June 30 the following year. The conveyancer will do the Statement of Adjustments before settlement occurs and you will be sent a copy of this document, and at the settlement any rates will be paid in full.
Government fees (such as stamp duty and registration fees) are payable at the time of settlement in most cases, if you have a mortgagee they will take this amount from your loan funds at settlement or will debit from your nominated bank account.

It is very important to conduct a final inspection of the property within a week prior to settlement. When conducting your final inspection you need to look at the property and ensure that the property is in the same state and condition as it was at the time of signing the Contract. If there are any problems with the final inspection you need to advise our office so we can negotiate with the Vendor’s Conveyancer of an outcome.
Approximately one week before settlement you should contact the electricity, gas and phone companies to organize the connection of your services.

Approximately one week before settlement our office will do the adjustments of the ongoing rates for the property and this will give you an indication of how much is owing for settlement. Your mortgagee will provide to us the amount available for the settlement and the difference between this amount and the final figure for settlement is the amount that you will need to provide for the settlement. We will not be able to provide the exact amount and who to make the cheque out to until the earliest 48 hours before settlement, this depends on when our office receives the cheque directions from the Vendor’s Conveyancer and they need to get the payout figures, etc from banks and they are not provided until 24-48 hours before settlement.
On settlement day you are not needed at the settlement. We appoint a settlement agent to attend the settlement on our behalf and they will hand over all necessary documents and collect any documents needed, they then give our office a phone call to advise us that the settlement has gone through and we will then contact yourself and fax to the Real Estate Agent to release the keys.
If possible you should try to arrange your move into the property for the following day in case there is any delay in the settlement or a problem arrises with any documentation. If the settlement is delayed to late in the afternoon or the following day you will not have access to the property until this settlement takes place.
Once settlement occurs we will notify the rating authorities that the property has settled and of the new owners details.