Real Estate Lawyers: directory of firms

For a standard purchase of an established house on a clean title, a licensed conveyancer does the same core work as a solicitor: reviewing the contract, ordering searches, attending to settlement and lodging the dealing. They are generally cheaper and often faster because it is all they do.

A solicitor is the better choice when the transaction carries legal questions alongside the conveyance. Buying through a trust or a company, buying with a related party, off-the-plan contracts with sunset clauses, a property with an unapproved structure, a deceased estate, a family transfer, a business sale that includes premises, or anything where a dispute is already brewing.

If you start with a conveyancer and the matter turns legal, you will be referred to a lawyer anyway, usually with less time left on the contract than you would like.

Residential purchases and sales are the bulk of the work, but the risk profile changes sharply outside them. Off-the-plan contracts bring sunset dates, plan variations and a long gap between signing and title. Subdivisions and development sites bring planning permits, contributions and staged settlements.

Commercial leases are a separate discipline again, with retail lease legislation in every state imposing disclosure obligations on landlords and, in some cases, minimum terms. Rural property brings water rights, access and biosecurity issues that do not arise in a suburban sale.

Strata and community title purchases turn on the owners corporation records: levies, sinking fund, special levies foreshadowed, building defects and by-laws about pets, parking and short-stay letting.

Easements and covenants restricting what you can build. Encroachments where a fence or a garage sits over a boundary. Caveats that need removing before settlement. A plan that does not match what is on the ground.

Then the building side: work done without a permit, a pool without a compliant barrier, an unregistered septic system, or building work that is outside the warranty period in that state. Each of these is fixable, but only if it is found before settlement rather than after.

The final category is the one people forget: an owners corporation with a known defect and no funds, where the special levy lands on the new owner.

There are three separate numbers in a conveyancing transaction and they are often conflated. The professional fee is what your conveyancer or solicitor charges. Disbursements are the searches, certificates and lodgement fees paid to third parties on your behalf. Duty is a state tax assessed on the transaction, and it dwarfs the other two.

A solicitor must give you a written costs disclosure setting out a genuine estimate and how costs are calculated, and telling you that you may ask for an itemised bill and may take a costs dispute to the regulator. Ask specifically whether the quoted fee includes contract review before signing, and what happens if settlement is delayed or the contract falls through.

For a non-lawyer conveyancer in Victoria, Consumer Affairs Victoria publishes a public register of licensed conveyancers, and complaints about them go to Consumer Affairs Victoria rather than to the legal regulator. Other states have equivalent licensing bodies.

For a lawyer, search the state register of lawyers. Conveyancing and real property is a searchable area of practice on the Victorian register. If you believe a non-lawyer conveyancer is doing legal work that is not conveyancing work, the Victorian Legal Services Board is the body that investigates it.