Queensland is on the cusp of an overhaul of the principal legislative mechanism that has governed the State since 1974. The Property Law Bill 2023 (“the Bill”) was introduced into the Queensland Parliament on 23 February 2023 and a report of the Legal Affairs and Safety Committee (after receipt of submissions) was tabled on 14 April 2023 recommending that the Bill be passed.
The Bill seeks to:
- repeal outdated or unnecessary provisions in the current legislation;
- redraft the current provisions in modernised language;
- provide a legal framework that is updated to reflect changes associated with electronic dealings in property and electronic service as well as reflecting current property, titling and conveyancing practice;
- simplify and update various provisions, including leases, release of an assignor on assignment and the transfer of covenants to successors in title;
- minimise the inadvertent creation of instalment contracts;
- implement a statutory seller disclosure scheme that clarifies the disclosure obligations of a seller, requiring a transparent and consolidated form of disclosure and providing information of value to the decision of a buyer to purchase.
Perhaps the most significant change from a lay person’s perspective is the proposal to create a statutory seller disclosure scheme that will apply to all sales of freehold land. A seller will be required to give the buyer a disclosure statement (including a statement that there are no undisclosed unregistered or statutory easements, covenants or encumbrances affecting the property) and certain prescribed documents before the buyer signs the contract for sale.
The prescribed documents would include a title search, a copy of the registered plan of survey, rates and water notices and, if the lot is included in a community titles scheme, a copy of the community management statement recorded for the scheme and a body corporate certificate given by the body corporate. This would be a layer of disclosure not previously mandated and will require sellers to go to effort and expense of assembling this before a contract is signed by the buyer.
No date has been proposed for the passage of the Bill into law. We will provide a further update when that occurs. In the meantime, people should expect a different layer of seller disclosure to become a reality some time later this year.