Introduction to buying or selling a house
Last updated
This chapter includes information about buying and selling a house where the property has a registered land title (see ‘Land titles’). The topics covered include conveyancing, mortgages, government assistance schemes, and the contract of sale.
A note on conveyancing
While this chapter contains information about conveyancing, it does not provide information detailed enough to enable you to do your own conveyancing.
Furthermore, it is now difficult for a party to a real estate transaction to do their own conveyancing, as in Victoria, electronic conveyancing is now mandatory.
Most electronic conveyancing now takes place via an electronic platform (e.g. Property Exchange Australia), to which solicitors and conveyancers subscribe.
For more information, see ‘Conveyancing’, below.
Key terms
The key terms used in this chapter include:
- vendor: the person or organisation selling a property;
- buyer: the person or organisation purchasing a property;
- discharging mortgagee: the bank lending the money to the vendor;
- incoming mortgagee: the bank lending the money to the buyer.
All these four parties participate in the settlement of a conveyance.
