This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
When you buy a residential property in Queensland, the real estate agent must by law give you a Warning Statement. This is to be signed before you sign the contract.
“Do not sign the attached contract without reading and understanding this warning,” the Fair Trading statement says. “Do not sign if you feel pressured,” it adds.
But sellers get no statutory warnings. Unlike your buyers, you can’t cool-off. You are not told to first obtain independent legal advice or to get an independent valuation.
Along with other solicitors, consumer advocates and even a couple of concerned agents, I have long unsuccessfully tried to convince the Beattie Government, and its predecessors, that sellers need as much protection as buyers. Sellers can be as vulnerable as buyers, and just as susceptible to agent pressure. Why no pre-contract warning, or the right to cool-off from agents’ listing agreements, or from sales contracts?
Real estate skulduggery is made easier in Queensland because legally-unqualified agents are allowed not only to prepare contracts but also to see to their signing. “You only need a solicitor later to do the conveyancing,” trusting consumers are told. Most solicitors spot dodgy contracts too late.
Until the Government prohibits even honest, competent and responsible agents from preparing contracts and controlling their signing, agents should be obliged by law to provide Warning Statements to sellers. Better still, make agent-prepared contracts unenforceable unless the parties have first had independent legal advice.
The Office of Fair Trading’s Code of Conduct merely requires agents to give sellers “a genuine opportunity” to obtain independent professional advice before signing listing agreements and sales contracts. Yet this is a rarely-practised and poorly-enforced line in the sand. Until the Beattie Government toughens up and polices its laws, real estate racketeers will continue to mislead, deceive and defraud.
By Tim O’Dwyer is a Queensland solicitor and consumer advocate – watchdog@argonautlegal.com.au
