What Does a Conveyancer Actually Do When You Buy a House?

You’ve found the house. Your offer has been accepted. The agent is excited. You’re mentally arranging furniture.

And then someone says:

“Send the contract to your conveyancer.”

Right. But what exactly are we doing with it?

Contrary to popular belief, a conveyancer does considerably more than send emails, ask you to sign things and mysteriously reappear on settlement day to tell you that you can collect the keys.

Here’s what is actually happening behind the scenes.

First, we read the contract. All of it.

Before you sign a contract to buy property in NSW, your conveyancer should review it.

And yes, we really do read the whole thing.

A NSW contract for sale can easily run to 100 pages or more. Some of those pages are fairly standard. Others are very much not.

We check things such as:

• the purchase price and deposit;
• the proposed settlement period;
• inclusions and exclusions;
• the cooling-off period;
• special conditions added by the vendor;
• the title;
• easements, covenants and restrictions;
• documents attached to the contract; and
• anything else that could materially affect your purchase.

Then we explain the important parts to you in plain English.

Because telling a client that something is “subject to the provisions of clause 14.7 as amended by special condition 36” isn’t particularly helpful unless we also tell you what that actually means.

We find the things you didn’t know you needed to ask about

This is probably one of the most important parts of conveyancing for property buyers.

Most buyers know to ask whether the dishwasher is included.

Fewer buyers know to ask whether there is a drainage easement running through the exact spot where they plan to put a pool.

That’s where we come in.

We review the title for things like easements, covenants and restrictions that may affect the property. If any of them are overlooked, the consequences tend to show up later, when your options are considerably narrower.

Importantly, we need to know what you intend to do with the property.

If you’re planning to live in the house exactly as it is, something on title may have very little practical impact.

If your first sentence to us is, “We’re going to knock down the back, put in a pool, build a granny flat and maybe subdivide later,” we are going to look at the contract through a slightly different lens.

Please tell us these things.

We are conveyancers, not psychics.

We negotiate the contract before you sign

Finding an issue is only half the job.

If there is something in the contract we don’t like, we can request that it be amended before exchange.

That might mean asking for a special condition to be deleted, changing the settlement period, negotiating the deposit, clarifying an inclusion or requesting another amendment relevant to your purchase.

Does the vendor have to agree?

No.

But it’s much better to have that conversation while you still have a choice about whether to sign the contract.

Your negotiating power tends to decrease rather dramatically once you’ve already agreed to the thing you’re trying to negotiate.

Then contracts exchange

This is the point where things become real.

Once contracts have exchanged, you are generally legally bound to the purchase, subject to any applicable cooling-off rights and the terms of the contract.

Your conveyancer makes sure you understand when that happens and what deadlines start running from exchange.

This is also where we become part conveyancer, part project manager and part professional nag.

There are dates to monitor, searches to order, a lender to coordinate with, documents to prepare and approximately 147 emails flying between everyone involved in the transaction.

That last figure isn’t scientifically verified, but some days it feels conservative.

We deal with searches and enquiries

After exchange, we undertake the searches and enquiries appropriate to the conveyancing transaction.

These can relate to things such as council and water information, land tax, rates and other matters relevant to settlement and your legal ownership of the property.

Not every property requires exactly the same enquiries.

A freestanding house, vacant land and strata apartment are different transactions and can raise different issues.

The aim isn’t to order paperwork for the sake of creating an impressive looking file.

It’s to obtain the information we need to properly complete your purchase.

We keep an eye on your finance, but we aren’t your broker

If you’re borrowing money, your lender becomes a very important participant in settlement.

We liaise with your lender and make sure the legal side of the transaction is ready to go.

Your broker or bank deals with the finance approval itself.

We deal with getting that finance into the settlement.

And if your bank is not ready when settlement is approaching?

Let’s just say we become very interested in their progress.

We calculate what you actually need to pay at settlement

The purchase price isn’t the only number involved on settlement day.

There can be adjustments for council rates, water charges and, where applicable, strata levies and other amounts under the contract.

The basic idea is that the vendor and purchaser each contribute the appropriate amount for the periods they own the property.

We review those figures and calculate the amount required to complete your purchase.

So when we send you a settlement statement containing a collection of numbers that don’t immediately resemble the price you agreed to pay, there is a reason.

We promise we haven’t just made them up.

We help if something goes sideways

Most property purchases settle without major drama.

Some decide they would like to be memorable.

• Finance can be delayed.
• A final inspection can reveal a problem.
• An agreed inclusion can mysteriously disappear.
• The vendor might not be ready.
• Your bank might not be ready.
• Settlement figures might be wrong.
• Someone in the chain may suddenly need an extension.

When something changes, your conveyancer deals with the legal and practical consequences, communicates with the other side and works out what needs to happen next. Most of these have a preventable cause and a step that heads it off, which is why we chase them early rather than late.

This is often the part of conveyancing that buyers don’t see.

And ideally, you don’t.

What happens at settlement?

Most NSW property settlements now happen electronically.

There isn’t a room full of solicitors dramatically exchanging cheques and title deeds anymore… Much less cinematic.

Your conveyancer coordinates the electronic settlement with your lender and the vendor’s representative, confirms the funds and documents are ready and completes the legal transfer of the property. There is a fair bit going on in the background of that day, almost none of which requires you to be present.

Once settlement goes through, we let the agent know.

Then you get the phone call you’ve actually been waiting for:

You can pick up the keys!!

And just like that, weeks of legal work and conveyancing are forgotten. It’s all about the keys now. Fair enough… honestly, we get it!!

Does conveyancing change depending on where you’re buying?

The legal conveyancing process is broadly the same across NSW, but the properties certainly aren’t.

Our Sydney conveyancing matters range from Inner West terraces and Eastern Suburbs apartments to homes on the North Shore and Northern Beaches and across Western Sydney.

On the Central Coast, we deal with everything from apartments around Gosford to established homes, acreage and coastal properties.

Different properties raise different questions.

An older terrace may have very different title and access considerations from a coastal home, an acreage property or an established suburban house.

Good conveyancing isn’t about assuming every property in a particular suburb has the same problem.

It’s about reviewing the actual property you’re buying.

So, what are you actually paying your conveyancer for?

Yes, there is paperwork.

Quite a lot of paperwork, actually.

But you’re really paying someone to take responsibility for the legal side of one of the biggest purchases you’re likely to make.

• We review the contract.
• We investigate the title.
• We negotiate amendments.
• We manage deadlines.
• We coordinate with your lender.
• We calculate settlement figures.
• We deal with the other side.
• We complete settlement.

And, importantly, we tell you what you actually need to worry about … and what you don’t.

If you’re weighing that up against handling it yourself, we’ve set out what DIY conveyancing in NSW actually involves separately.

At MG Conveyancing, we’ve been doing this for more than 25 years. We act for buyers across Sydney and the Central Coast and explain the process without unnecessarily complicated legal language.

Because buying a house is stressful enough without needing a law degree to understand your conveyancer’s emails.

Buying a property? Send us the contract before you sign and we’ll take it from there.