By Peter Rosier and Gabrielle Lea -
Snapshot
- The 2017 edition of the Contract for the Sale and Purchase of Land is now available online at the Law Society’s eCOS Portal.
- Practitioners must add the Loose Fill Asbestos Insulation Warning to any contracts drafted using prior editions which might exchange after 1 September 2017. This warning is available at the Law Society’s eCOS portal.
- Don’t forget to ensure that any by-laws in force are attached to the contract from 1 September 2017.
- Be aware of the new way in which non-regular periodic contributions are to be adjusted in sales of a lot in a strata or community title scheme.
- Check in appropriate cases to see if there is a strata renewal proposal and if so, whether certain minutes have been prepared.
The bewildering pace at which new editions of the Contract for Sale and Purchase of Land have appeared leads the profession to ask the question: why? The 2005 edition was, after all, in use for nine years, only requiring some tweaks as Vendor Duty came and went. What’s happened between 2014 and 2017 that has led to not one, but four editions in the space of a little over three years?
The important changes to the prescribed documents under the Conveyancing (Sale of Land) Regulation 2017 (NSW) (‘Regulation’) are the key driver for the 2017 edition of the contract for the sale and purchase of land. The 2016/17 edition was an interim update, largely due to changes in the Foreign Resident Capital Gains Withholding Tax Regime which commenced on 1 July 2017.
