You may have heard that the legal process of buying and selling property is now electronic, but do you know what that means?
PEXA (property Exchange Australia) is an online property exchange where most property transactions are now undertaken. It is a platform that allows lawyers, conveyancers, lenders and other parties to complete transactions and lodge documents to complete the sale and purchase of property or financial settlements relating to mortgages over property.
It does away with paper settlements for most transactions, although there are still some transactions that can be completely lodged manually.
The many benefits of electronic conveyancing
Electronic conveyancing allows transactions to be completed quicker and also allows real time lodgement of documents with Land Registry Services.
The old paper settlements meant that sometimes banks could retain documents for days or weeks before lodgement. With electronic conveyancing, these documents are lodged instantly so that buyers can have confidence that their interest in the property is registered immediately to protect their new asset.
Lawyers are no longer required to have to draw bank or collect bank cheques at settlement. Clients are no longer burdened by the need to attend a bank and wait in a long queue to draw bank cheques for settlement of their purchase.
Another benefit of electronic conveyancing is where there is a hiccup at settlement. Ordinarily, we’d have to rebook the settlement to another day and make numerous phone calls to ensure all parties can attend the new settlement date, location and time. With PEXA, new settlement bookings are easily and quickly arranged online with little fuss.
The electronic system also checks and matches information, detecting errors prior to settlement. If an error is detected, the system notifies the relevant parties, reducing the risk of settlement failure due to a data entry error or something that may have been inadvertently missed.
Once everyone is satisfied that the documents are accurate and all is in order, the parties electronically sign the documents to verify the transaction is ready to settle.
After settlement, clients can access their funds quickly, with settlement proceeds usually being deposited into vendor bank accounts within 24 hours. No more collecting bank cheques and having to bank them and wait 3 days for funds to clear.
Is PEXA safe?
You may have heard of some cases of fraud through the PEXA systems including the case of Masterchef contestant Dani Venn. Most of these cases were actually related to emails (either the client’s emails or the lawyer/conveyancer) being hacked. Not with the PEXA platform itself.
Still, PEXA since introduced stronger online protections to prevent fraud and has introduced a Residential Buyers Guarantee in cases of fraud.
There are a few steps that you (and we) can take to minimise risks which include:
- Make sure your email is fully secure.
- Regularly change your email password.
- Initiation multi factor authorisation so that you are notified if someone tried to access your email account.
- Bank account details should always be confirmed verbally and not just sent via email.
With these safety checks in mind, the use of electronic conveyancing offers benefits to all involved in what has traditionally been a cumbersome and protracted process.
For a good conveyancer Newtown to Nelson that can take care of the purchase or sale of your real estate, please contact your trusted team at Lawpoint.
