On and from 1 December 2019, the Contract for the Sale and Purchase of Land will be changing to coincide with reforms to off-the-plan builds.
The Conveyancing (Sale of Land) Amendment Regulation 2019 (NSW), aims to alleviate some of the current risks associated with off-the-plan purchases and provide greater transparency for prospective buyers.
One of the amendments which aims to do this, is the extension of cooling-off periods from 5 business days for off-the-plan contracts to 10 business days. This change to the cooling-off period is the main driver for a new 2019 edition of the Contract for Sale.
[If you would like to read about the other changes – click here]
As of 1 December 2019, the new cooling-off notice will need to be in all residential off-the-plan contracts.
As of the 2nd of June 2020, this cooling-off notice will also need to be included in all residential contacts, off-the-plan or not.
Any residential contract exchanged up until 30 November 2019 isn’t required to have the updated cooling-off notice.
A second reform to impact the Contract for Sale is the requirement for disclosure statements to be attached.
Come December 2019, vendors will have to attach a disclosure statement to the contract. This must contain a draft plan from the surveyor, the proposed lot number, a proposed schedule of finishes, draft by-laws and more.
If the disclosure statement, draft plan or other prescribed documents aren’t attached to your contract before it’s signed, buyers will be able to back-out of the deal within 14 days of exchange.
Other changes to the Contract include:
E-conveyancing:
- On page 2 of the contract, ‘proposed electronic transaction’ has been revised to ‘Electronic transaction’. This requires all mainstream conveyancing dealings to be lodged online, unless a waiver applies.
Nominated ‘Electronic Lodgement Network (ELN)’:
- An ELN must now be nominated on contract. Parties must then use the nominated network unless otherwise agreed.
New terminology:
- ‘NSW Duty’ will be updated to ‘NSW DAN’
- ‘RW Payment’ has been renamed ‘GSTRW payment’ (GST Residential Withholding payment)
- ‘Stamp duty’ is now ‘Transfer duty’
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