Whilst it is essential that a Contract of Sale be used to constitute a Sale of Property in Victoria and the REIV Standard Contract is the deferred norm, a Seller must consider the protection of their interests in the drafting of the contract and act accordingly.
Recently, it has been the experience of my office, that a number of real estate agencies and conveyancers with whom we have received Contracts of Sale from, have elected to use an unamended version of the REIV Standard Contract of Sale. To us, this reflects a failure to understand that the law is not static, but rather continuously evolving and given the heavy burden of putting the interests of a client first, every effort should be taken to consider how the changing law interacts with the sale your client is going through.
You see, Conveyancers and property Lawyers at their best, are all meant to be consumer advocates. We are meant to believe (at least this is what we are taught a law school!) that the rigour of the debate – the push and the pull between the interests of the seller and the buyer, is in fact the very PROCESS that brings out the Best Negotiated Outcome for both our clients.
So, when we see an unamended contact, a contract that has been recently drafted and fails to take into account the very important considerations of recent decisions of the court or it fails to take even the most rudimentary of addition precautious it does make you begin to wonder about how well that standard is being held up. Unfortunately, with such a falling standard – we all loose. But non moreso than the poor consumer who is none the wiser that their contract could have been better prepared and had it been done so, may not have exposed them to unnecessary risk in the process.
Now to you, the client – the detail should largely not matter. What SHOULD matter, is that the personal legal representative you engage should take the process as seriously and with as much conviction as any other matter they have handled and in so doing deliver to you the best of work available. Staying abreast of these developments takes work and time and unfortunately many across the industry appear not to understand the importance of these small changes, but as they say, the Devil is in the detail. And anyways… isn’t that why you hired someone – a professional – to conduct the process for you?
At think, we have an Executive Legal Team who periodically sits to make decisions about what is included and what is excluded from the standard amendments we make to the REIV Standard Contract of Sale. As a FIXED FEE firm, we are careful about what we include as wasted time on unnecessary negotiations could be a significant unnecessary cost to the firm. What I can say however, is that we consider everything strategically before we go ahead with it and we are willing to stand by our convictions and negotiate on your behalf to get a deal done on terms that a fair and give credence to common law changes.
This balance between protection and pragmatism is knife edge, but it is through the continuous meeting of this team and the analysis applied, that we as a group can be confident we are delivering the edge to our clients, everytime.
Read more at Think Conveyancing.
What you need to Know about the writer.Holding degrees in Accounting, Law and Marketing Christopher tries not to take himself or his subject matter too seriously. He is a leading spokesman and consumer advocate of the Conveyancing Industry in the media and online, having founded ThinkConveyancing.com.au and grown it to be the No.1 Conveyancing Firm in Australia according to independent sources.
BRISBANE | SYDNEY | MELBOURNE | PERTH
Contact Details
Ph: 1300 932 738
info@thinkconveyancing.com.au
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