Off the plan contracts review

What’s this about?

The NSW Government is seeking feedback from the community and the conveyancing and property industries about current issues affecting buyers of residential property off the plan, and ways to improve off the plan contract laws.

The Office of the Registrar General has released a discussion paper considering the effectiveness of the current off the plan disclosure regime under the Conveyancing Act 1919 and Conveyancing (Sale of Land) Regulation 2022. The paper identifies options to bolster consumer protections and to address emerging issues in this sector, including:

• introducing minimum readiness requirements before residential land can be sold off the plan
• enhancing disclosure requirements for off the plan contracts
• imposing penalties for developers who offer to sell residential land off the plan without appropriate disclosure
• expanding existing sunset clause protections to include other conditional events, like the need for development approval by a certain date
• solutions to address the increasing size of off the plan contracts.

A major focus of the paper is to consider whether the legislation should require preconditions to be met before a developer can offer land for sale off the plan (like owning the land before being able to sell it), or whether there are further disclosures needed so that buyers have more clarity about the proposal.

These options respond to community concerns about developers selling land off the plan before they have acquired ownership of the underlying lots or before they have lodged a development application.

This review follows major off the plan reforms in 2019 that introduced a new vendor disclosure regime to give purchasers more information up front, remedies where there are changes in the development from what was disclosed, longer cooling off periods, and tighter restrictions around how developers can end contracts using sunset clauses.

Your feedback is welcome on all aspects of the discussion paper, as well as any relevant matters not addressed in the paper.

Please access the relevant documents here:

• Discussion paper
• Conveyancing Act 1919 No 6
• Conveyancing (Sale of Land) Regulation 2022

Have your say

Have your say by 23 December 2022. You can provide feedback using the details below.