New off-the-plan laws announced

There will be more movement in legislation impacting strata and community title in the new year, but recently we have seen the introduction of measures to fix the problems introduced as part of earlier reforms. Changes have been made to the Conveyancing Act to rectify some of the problems with changes to sunset clauses.

Basically, when the market was booming, the Government wanted to stop developers from using the clauses to rescind sale contracts and then go and put the property on the market for resale at a higher price. Now the market isn’t growing and sales are slow there are now issues with non-settlement and developers can enforce their rights.

The Government has had to introduce changes to allow purchasers with some possible “out” options including what they were told they were purchasing is different to what has been delivered. There are other changes such as extending cooling-off periods and allowing electronic execution of sale documents.

It seems like there we are going to be in a permanent state of regulatory changes so it is important that your lawyers and strata managers are across these changes and can apprise you of any impact on your development.

December 2019