What is Conveyancing? – The term 'Conveyancing' refers to the legal documentation and administrative work associated with transferring the ownership of land or buildings from one owner to another. 

– The term 'Conveyancing' refers to the legal documentation and administrative work associated with transferring the ownership of land or buildings from one owner to another. 

The conveyancing procedure itself can vary in complexity from matter to matter and is often plagued by difficulties, drawbacks and time constraints.  If your method of choosing a Solicitor is price alone, then your conveyance could be fraught with problems.

This is why it is critical that you set your standards high in relation to the service levels you should expect when employing a conveyancing firm. 

When obtaining quotes as a Seller, or as a Buyer, there are many considerations you should take into account such as:-

• Many firms now claim that conveyancing is all that they do……but where does that leave you when things go wrong?  Most likely, billed by that firm and then packaged off to another law firm that deals with "conveyances gone wrong"?;
• Fixed Price Conveyancing is usually "fixed" only as long as nothing out of the ordinary occurs – watch out for the line somewhere in your quotation that says "we reserve our rights to charge additional fees for………";
• Does your quotation include things such as any extensions of time, negotiations for building and pest defects, additional (non standard) correspondence, attendance to lodgement of Settlement Notice at the Department of Natural Resources on your behalf, attendance at settlement on your behalf and being available to answer your questions at any time?;
• Ensure that you are aware up front if there are likely to be any out of pocket expenses such as postage, copying and faxing expenses.  If so obtain a likely estimate of these fees.
• Search fees – Pursuant to the Queensland Conveyancing Protocol there are a number of search enquiries that must be undertaken as standard.  These are Title Investigation searches, (ie. Title Search, Registered Plan, and if relevant Easements and Community Management Statements), Local Government  Rates, town planning and sewerage and drainage searches, Land Tax, Queensland Transport, Main Roads, Contaminated Land, Energex and Australian Securities Commission (if Seller or Purchaser a company).  You should ensure that your conveyancing firm is conducting all of those searches for the amount quoted.
  
  The cost of these searches will vary from Council to Council, and will depend upon the time frame allowed.  Most Councils require 10-12 working days for ordinary searches (least expensive) and 3-5 working days for urgent searches (more expensive).  Some conveyancing firms may quote for ordinary searches only to find (at your expense) that the prices quoted do not allow sufficient time for your searches to be returned prior to settlement.
• If you are utilising the services of a financial institution to fund some or all of the purchase funds, you need to be aware that standard conveyancing fees do not cover legal advice pertaining to Mortgage documentation.  You should ensure that your chosen firm is capable and prepared to provide you with this additional advice if the need arises and always ask the question "what will the additional cost for those advices be?";
• A Buyer should always ask for a conveyancing quote to include the stamp duty amount payable to the Office of State Revenue in relation to the transfer of the property.  This varies depending on whether you are buying land, your first home, your principal place of residence or an investment property.

Comparing quotes is always difficult as you never know exactly what quality of service you can expect – we hope this has been helpful to some of the readers this week so that they can obtain more comparative quotes when the time comes.