12/11/2022
Attention all purchasers of residential property.
You should consider it absolutely critical to validate your potential residential property purchase prior to entering into a contract to acquire the property.
The only way this can be done is by carrying out a formal search with the local council authority. Only these institutions hold the official records about a property and its characteristics.
You should never under any circumstances act on the marketing of the property by the real estate agent or vendor.
The reason for this is because another year has passed, and once again we have discovered during our inspections carried out, that there is a very high level of residential properties being marketed and contracts being executed for the sale and purchase of a property, where there is misleading and false information about the characteristics of a property within the advertising of the property on the internet.
From the year 1975, when the Building Act was introduced within Queensland statute law it has become mandatory for most significant residential construction work, to have an approval lodged with the local council authority and if the approval for construction is given, for there to be three inspections during the construction, culminating with the issuing of a final inspection certificate, or what is now known as a form 21.
If either the approval or inspection process has not been completed for work that is required to have approvals issued, under the terms of the building act and associated regulations, then it is considered to be illegal and can have very serious complications for property owner. Particularly in relation to insurance matters, trying to get retrospective certification and the selling of the property.
Quite astoundingly, our experiences over the last 20 years of carrying out inspections on residential properties, has revealed that around 50% of our inspections are on properties that are taken to the market within the Brisbane and greater Brisbane area, which are marketed falsely and not in line with the records held by the local council authority where the property is being sold.
This is also a clear breach of the statute law governing real estate agents and marketing of residential properties i.e. the Property Occupations Act 2014. 
An example of this could be a three-year-old property that is being sold as a four bedroom, two bathroom house and marketed as such on the Internet, yet when our clients carry out a formal search with the local council authority, they are actually informed that the council have no records of any building approval, or that there has been a building approval given but no final inspection certificate has been issued.
The reality therefore is that the property is actually illegal, incomplete construction work and certainly not what is being marketed on the Internet.
Don’t become a victim of this fraudulent act by signing a contract, without knowing what the official council records are for the property.
Unfortunately most of our clients enter into a contract without carrying out a search with the council and to compound this further, they use a contract provided by the Real Estate agent, which is one that is almost always a contract that has been created with input from their own association.
This contract does not provide the necessary protection for purchasers and furthermore actually puts them in position of having far less legal rights because of the clauses within the building and pest section of the contract, which are demonstrably more favourable to the vendor.
A purchaser must always seek legal advice and use a contract from your own solicitor that has clauses in that contract that gives them adequate protection as the purchaser.
The contract provided by most Real Estate agents and the one which has been created by their association does not in any way even begin to provide adequate legal protection and rights for purchasers and in fact we have seen over the years that it does the opposite and puts them at a disadvantage.
Remember, before you go anywhere the stage of completing a contract to buy a residential property, we strongly recommend you validate any marketing of the property on the Internet and the only way this can be done by carrying out the aforementioned Council searches.
Please feel free to contact Ryan on his mobile. Should you wish to discuss further. 
