Guides

Read before you sign anything

Three written guides to the parts of a property transaction that are easiest to get wrong, and most expensive to get wrong late. Each one shows you where to check it yourself.

General information, not legal advice. This page sets out how the law generally applies. It does not take account of your circumstances, and you should get advice about your own situation before acting on it. The official sources this page is written from are listed on it; where they differ from anything here, they are the authority.

Each guide takes one part of a conveyance in New South Wales, sets out how it actually works, and points to the legislation or the government’s own page so you can read the source rather than take our word for it.

They are general information rather than advice about your transaction. If you are looking for a type of transaction instead of a topic, start with residential purchase, residential sale, off the plan, strata purchases, duty and exemptions or first home buyers. How it works sets out what happens from your first message to settlement.

If a date may be running against you

Read this one first. Cooling off, and the rescission rights that come from missing documents, all run on short periods measured from exchange. They expire whether or not you have decided what to do.

Cooling off, and when there is none

For anyone who has just exchanged, or is about to. It explains when a cooling-off period applies to a residential purchase, why there is none at an auction, what a section 66W certificate gives up, and why using the right is not free. It sends you to the official page for the current period rather than printing a number.

Before you sign, and what you are signing

Nearly everything in a contract for sale can be changed before exchange and almost nothing can be changed after it. These two guides are about the window in between.

What a contract review actually checks

For anyone holding a contract and being asked how soon they can sign. It sets out what must be attached to a contract for sale under the Conveyancing (Sale of Land) Regulation 2022 (NSW), what the section 10.7 planning certificate discloses, where the special conditions shift risk onto a buyer, and which dates decide what happens if something goes wrong.

Off-the-plan: sunset clauses and disclosure

For anyone buying a property that has not been built. It covers the disclosure statement and the draft plan, the restrictions on a developer rescinding under a sunset clause, what happens when something disclosed changes in a material particular, and how your deposit is held until completion.

What these guides are

Each guide describes how one part of the conveyancing system generally works. It is not advice about your transaction and it cannot be, because almost every question in a conveyance turns on facts a web page does not know: what your contract says, what is attached to it, when you exchanged, and what your lender has actually agreed to.

You will not find a fee, a cooling-off period in days, a duty rate or a threshold in any of them. Those are set by legislation and by Revenue NSW and they are changed, so we link to the page that carries the current figure instead of printing one that will quietly go out of date. Getting a deadline wrong on a page somebody relies on is the worst thing a site like this could do.

Every guide lists the official sources it was written from. Where a source and a guide disagree, the source is right.

How to check something for yourself

Four places between them cover nearly everything in these guides. If one of them no longer matches what a guide says, follow the source, and we would be glad to be told so the guide can be corrected.

NSW legislation, for the law itself. The Conveyancing Act 1919 and the Conveyancing (Sale of Land) Regulation 2022 govern the contract, the disclosure and the cooling-off period, and the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 is where the section 10.7 planning certificate comes from.
The NSW Government's own property pages, for how a transaction runs in practice. Start at contracts and deposits, buying at auction or steps to selling a property.
Revenue NSW, for transfer duty and for the first home buyer schemes. Its transfer duty page carries the current rates and its calculator, and the first home buyer page carries the current eligibility criteria.
Your own contract, for the dates. No general page can tell you when you exchanged, what was attached, what your settlement date is or what your special conditions say. That comes from the document in front of you.

The law changes, and so do the numbers

The legislation behind these guides is reasonably stable, but it is amended, and property law in New South Wales has been amended repeatedly in recent years. The off-the-plan disclosure regime is the clearest example: the obligation to attach a disclosure statement, the restriction on a developer rescinding under a sunset clause and the right to compensation for a change in a material particular were all introduced by reform. An article written before them reads exactly like one written after.

The figures move more often than the law does. Duty rates, first home buyer thresholds, the cooling-off period and the proportion forfeited on cooling off are all set outside this website, which is why they are not printed here.

Each page on this site carries the date it was last updated. Treat that date as the limit of what we are telling you: it means the page matched the official sources on that day.

Have these to hand

The guides are much easier to use with your own papers beside you. In a conveyance it is usually the contract and the dates that decide what you can still do.

The contract for sale, in full, including the annexures at the back
The documents attached to it, including the section 10.7 planning certificate
The date you exchanged, if you have
Your lender, and whether finance is pre-approved or formally approved
Any notice you have received from the vendor or the developer, and the date it arrived
The agent's name, and the auction date if there is one