PREPARATION OF CONTRACT – PART 1 OF 3

Summary of what we will learn in this webpage:

• Where to go online to find out the title reference of a property from a street address
• How to use an information broker like SAI Global to order the “Contract for the sale and purchase of land 2018 edition”
• What are Vendor Disclosure Documents or Prescribed Documents
• How to use SAI Global platform to order Vendor Disclosure Documents
• What constitues a valid contract, so much so that a property is now ready to be put on the market for sale 

Before we begin, please note that there are quite a few colours on our website. This is because this website is informational, and to highlight or emphasise certain words, we highlighted them in different colours, much like how we use different coloured highlighting pens in our textbooks.

Step 1: Order the “Contract for the sale and purchase of land 2018 edition” (we call this Contract for short), and other required documents (normally called Vendor Disclosure Documents or Prescribed Documents).

As the Contract is copyright protected, we need to buy a copy of the Contract online. Information brokers sell such contracts online for between $10.50 to $15.00. We will use an information broker called SAI Global to show how to order such a Contract, AND to order other required documents that must be included in the contract. These other required documents are what lawyers normally call Vendor Disclosure Documents. The Contract, together with these Vendor Disclosure Documents, make up for a valid contract that one can use to sell the property by oneself, or send to a real estate agent marketing the property for sale.

“Contract for the sale and purchase of land 2018 edition” = Contract

Contract + Vendor Disclosure Documents = valid contract or contract

You can find online examples of what valid contracts look like.

To see a sample copy of what the copyrighted Contract looks like unfilled, click on Sample Contract 2018 Edition. 

Before ordering any Contracts or Vendor Disclosure Documents, we need to know the title reference of the property we are selling. Because what we have now is just the address of the property we are selling.

(Note: Title Reference is a unique number used to identify a title of property. It is often presented in the format 1/10222, where 1 is the lot number and 10222 is the Deposited Plan Number. If it is a strata unit that is for sale, its title reference may look something like 23/SP10223, where 23 is the lot number and 10223 is the Strata Plan Number.)

To find out the title reference of any Sydney or NSW property, click on NSW LRS portal page.

After accepting the terms and conditions, the web page looks like:

Then click on Street address inquiry and we’ll be asked to enter the property address, after which we will be given the title reference for this property.

Using SAI Global to order Contract and Vendor Disclosure Documents:

To use SAI Global, if we are only using it to make a one-time order, we need to create a one-off account.

The web page looks like: 

Once the account is created with SAI Global and we logged in, the web page looks like:

Now, we shall type in something for the Matter Reference box, it is just a name of our choice for our own reference.

Then, to order the Contract, tick on “Electronic Contract for Sale – 2018 Edition”. The web page will now look like:

We will notice that when “Electronic Contract for Sale – 2018 Edition” is ticked, some other documents (or certificates as they are also called) are also automatically selected. These other documents (as seen above) are:

Title Search Online

Planning Certificate Section 10.7

Sewer Service Diagram

Land Tax Sec 47 Certificate and

Copy of Plan and Plan Documents

These documents / certificates are also called Vendor Disclosure Documents. 

It is now a requirement, as part of the Vendor Disclosure Documents, to also order the Sewer Mains Location Reference Sheet. So we need to tick on it too, and then click Next.

We will now be prompted to enter details about the title reference, property address, the registered proprietor(s) name and address, etc. The web page looks like:

As we can see, this is quite a long web page. We do NOT need to enter answers for all the questions listed here. A trick is to enter answers for “Title Reference” panel, “Property Address” panel, “Office of State Revenue Details” panel, “Registered Proprietors” panel and click Next. Whatever information SAI Global needs before allowing us to proceed to purchase will show up in a red box, prompting our answers to these.

The next web page to show up is the Purchase web page (Note: words in red and blue are mocked-up for illustration purposes and for explanation). Under the Certificates heading, the documents we ticked on the order page after we first logged in, together with these documents’ prices, are displayed:

After clicking on the Purchase button, a View Order web page will then show up:

(Note: we ordered more certificates in the previous Purchase web page than it’s shown in this View Order web page. This is because this View Order web page did not follow on directly from the previous Purchase web page. This View Order web page is from another purchase we did.

To get this particular View Order web page results, we would have ordered and purchased

Title Search 2/456789

Copy of Plan – Deposited Plan 456789 

Copy of Plan or Plan Documents – Deposited Plan – 88B 456789

in the Purchase web page.) 

What is important in this View Order web page is the follow-on orders. Under the “Follow-on Order (Title Documents)” heading, we can see that there are 4 Dealings. These are follow-on orders because these Dealings would be present in the Title Search document (click to see a Sample Title Search document.)

Out of these Dealings, we do NOT need to order the Dealings for Mortgage and Caveat, but we need to order

Dealing – Covenant A258147

Dealing – Easement AK785214

These 2 Dealings are part of the Vendor Disclosure Documents. We shall tick on their boxes and order them.

Finally, at this end of this ordering process, 

the following documents will be emailed to the email account we used when signing up to SAI Global:

1. Contract for the sale and purchase of land 2018 edition (this will come in as 2 emails, one for the first 3 pages of the Contract, and another for the next 17 pages of standard clauses that comes with this Contract)

2. Title Search (in our above example, it is for title reference 2/456789)

3. Copy of Plan – Deposited Plan (in our above example, it is for 456789)

4. Copy of Plan or Plan Documents – Deposited Plan – 88B (in our above example, it is for 456789)

5. Dealing – Covenant (in our above example, it is for A258147)

6. Dealing – Easement (in our above example, it is for AK785214)

7. Planning Certificate Section 10.7 (in our above example, this would take 8 days to arrive; but in general this usually takes 1-5 days to arrive in one’s inbox) – Here is a Sample Planning Certificate Section 10.7.

8. Land Tax Sec 47 Certificate – Here is a Sample Land Tax Sec 47 Certificate.

9. Sewer Service Diagram – Here is a Sample Sewer Service Diagram.

10. Sewer Mains Location Reference Sheet – Here is a Sample Sewer Mains Location Diagram.

If the property that is for sale comes with a swimming pool, we will also need to include a certificate of compliance or non-compliance.

All of these documents (except the Land Tax Sec 47 Certificate) put together constitute a valid contract. 

Next, we will show how to fill in the first 3 pages of the “Contract for the sale and purchase of land 2018 edition“.