Dispute the Contract of Sale if the Need Arises

What are the pre-settlement inspections for? Put in simplest terms, they are there to ensure that the contract of sale is respected to the last letter. There have been instances when the vendor has taken the liberty to replace a certain appliance or fitting with another one, assuming that his nefarious act would go unnoticed.

Importance of pre-settlement inspection

Buyers beware! This is why your conveyancer will advise you to conduct your pre-settlement inspection as close to the signing of the contract as possible. If you emphasise on keeping the dates for both the activities same (with a difference of a few hours), the vendor will at least allow you to conduct your inspection a day in advance of signing the contract.

This can work brilliantly for you because the psychological dagger lies on the throat of the vendor and he may not dare to replace something when the pre-settlement inspection is fresh in the mind of the buyer.

Find out if everything is just as stated in the contract

Another thing I have always worried about is the way the buyers are swindled into buying a home which does not have things in fine working condition. For instance, let us suppose a home has serious problems of water leakage. With little effort, the vendor can hide the flaw.

He just needs to re-grout the tiles, cover the leakage from the adjacent room beneath strategically placed carpets and keep the tap off for a few days and there you go!

This is enough to keep an unsuspecting buyer off the trail. But this example is enough to emphasise on the need for really focussed pre-settlement inspections. If sellers can perform “item-switching” hoping that you will miss out on claiming them, it is your job to beat them in their own game.

Do you hire a conveyancer as a thumb rule?