How to Choose a Conveyancer for Your Home Purchase
Understanding property contracts is best left to professionals. Learn how to choose a conveyancer for your home purchase based on our tips. This will make the home buying process a smoother one.
Do I Need a Conveyancer to Buy a House?
As a home buyer or property investor, a home conveyancer is a must have, to assist you with the legal documents and the transfer of property.
It’s imperative to understand real estate contracts before signing, including a clause on having a building inspected subject to purchase. You’ll be reducing your risk when you have a professional look over your property contract including the Section 32. This will give you protection.
While you are not compelled by law to use a conveyancer when purchasing property in Victoria, it’s a worthwhile investment to have a conveyancer handle your legal contracts. Using a DIY kit, as an alternative, comes with risks and given that buying property can be one of the largest financial outlays you make in your life, you’ll want to ask if it’s worth the risk to handle the legal contracts without a property conveyancer.
Property conveyancers have expert knowledge around property law.
Choosing the Right Property Conveyancer in Victoria
When you’ve made the decision to start looking for your ideal property, is the best time to look at choosing the right property conveyancer for you.
It may take some time to find one you are comfortable with and that meets your criteria so don’t delay the process.
Here are our top 10 tips on deciding on a conveyancer when buying a home or property investment.
- Check that the Victorian conveyancer you are considering is licensed with the Consumer Affairs Public Register of Conveyancers.
- Ask if the conveyancer has professional indemnity insurance as this is a requirement for all Victorian conveyancers. If you use a DIY conveyancing kit, you will not be covered by this insurance.
- Ask your conveyancer if they are a member of any associations. Commonly, Conveyancers in Victoria will be members of the Australian Institute of Conveyancers Vic (AIC Vic).
- Ask friends and family if they have used and are happy to refer you to a conveyancer for home purchasing or selling.
- Find out the experience level of the real estate conveyancer.
- Find out about their fee structure and whether they provide a fixed fee or other terms.
- If possible, choose someone local in case you need to visit their office. You can do this by searching for “conveyancer Melbourne” in a search engine or replace “Melbourne” with the suburb where you live.
- See if there are any verified reviews online by searching for the conveyancer by name in a browser.
- Check any references.
- Speak with a few to find out how friendly and approachable their staff are, if it’s a good fit for how you would like to deal with them. See if you will have direct contact with the conveyancer and how responsive they are should you require them to contact you.
What Else do you Need Besides a Property Conveyancer?
Your Victorian property conveyancer can give legal advice regarding the property title transfer and carry out legal work related to this. They can find your property title and review it and check the Section 32 of the property contract including advising on the T&Cs in the contract of sale.
What they are unable to do, is advise on the structure of the property / home. Thus, another critical element to purchasing a home is to have a pre-purchase building inspection conducted. This is best conducted before you sign your property contract, so you have vital information in a property condition report.
How Home Building Assist Can Assist with Finding a Conveyancer
Our building inspector is a registered builder who has been in the construction industry for over 30 years. This provides you with leveraging our knowledge, expertise and contacts.
We can provide you with the details of a conveyancer in Melbourne or conveyancer in Geelong areas as an option for you. We recommend you speak with more than one conveyancer to compare and choose based on the criteria we outlined above.
Give us a call and we’ll get you on the way to choosing a conveyancer.
