conveyancing

Conveyancing

Legal Advice

  • Legal advice ensures your interests are protected.
  • Legal advice ensures you understand the finer details of what you are agreeing to.

How is Lees Luke different?

What sets Lees Luke aside from other lawyers in the Shoalhaven?
  • Independence – we advise clients fearlessly and without having to favour any other person or business. This includes Real Estate Agents, brokers or the like.
  • Council compliance – we do not take short-cuts. Unfortunately a lot of building work is carried out without Council approval or does not properly comply with the Council approvals.  Fixing these matters with the Council or a subsequent purchaser can be expensive.

Purchase of a property

In the purchase a property, we can assist you with:
  • Investigating the title
  • Investigating any encumbrances, easements and the like.
  • Ensuring that the clauses in the contract are fair.
  • Ensuring that you are not excluding any rights that you may need.
  • Checking that Council approvals exist for the building work and use of the property.

Sales

The process of buying or selling residential property seems simple enough, but it is not always the case. It is important to seek experienced legal advice and assistance. There are implied into the contract for sale various warranties that can be relied upon by the purchaser.

Signing contracts in the real estate agent’s office

Our policy is to invariably advise clients against signing contracts in a real estate agent’s office without legal advice. If you are selling then there could be changes to the property or your circumstances since the draft contract was sent to the real estate agent. The draft contract may need to be updated. If you are purchasing you need to get advice on the form of the contract, carry out a number of inspections, sign an unconditional loan contract for finance and take other steps before you commit to a purchase. Agents may not complete the contract in a proper manner and may fail to exchange the contracts correctly. In such cases this has led to expensive disputes and Court cases.

Strata or Community Title purchases

These can present unique challenges and we advise purchasers to thoroughly investigate the complex before buying.

“Off the plan” purchases

In our experience, many contracts to sell strata properties or vacant land “off the plan” are unreasonable and are drawn to unduly favour the developer. Trying to amend these contracts often involves a lot of work and expense and many purchasers are often not as thorough as they should be. Is the Vendor providing –
  • Pest Treatment documentation?
  • Warranty Certificates for all PC items?
Is there a comprehensive list of the external inclusions and finishes to the building? Is there a comprehensive list of the internal inclusions and finishes to the building? What happens if the Developer varies the Plans for work to be done under this contract? What happens if the Developer does not:
  • diligently proceed and complete all work to be done under this contract in a proper and workmanlike manner?
  • supply all materials necessary for the completion of the work of the kind and quality stated in the plans and/or specifications?
  • comply with all relevant Australian Standards, laws and the requirements of the relevant local council and all statutory authorities with respect to the work?