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Welcome to The OMB Law Board, the podcast where legal insights meet practical advice. Hosted by Simon Bennett, Managing Partner at OMB Solicitors, this show delves into what you can expect when engaging with OMB Solicitors. Specialising in property law and commercial law, OMB also boasts dedicated teams for estate planning, contested estates, body corporate matters, litigation, and family law.
Each episode features in-depth discussions led by experienced team leaders, some with over 20 years of expertise. You'll gain valuable knowledge on initial consultations, cost assessments, timelines, and the importance of clear communication and confidentiality in legal matters.
Join us to break down barriers and navigate your legal journey with confidence. Tune in for expert advice, client stories, and tips on how to prepare for your legal needs. The OMB Law Board is your trusted source for all things legal.
(upbeat music) Thanks for joining us on the OMB Law Board. I'm Simon Bennett from OMB. And I've got one of our property lawyers here today who works closely with me and the property law team, Georgia. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me, Simon. Yeah, we're going to talk all things property today. I was going to talk to you about coffee.
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I think we've done that. I think we did that. And it didn't go well for you. But hey, that's just a story from 2021. If anyone wants to search that on the internet, I don't know. Wouldn't recommend. Not recommend it. Properties today, all things property, really the basics and the start of property, because it's such a massive topic. I just want to talk to you about buying and selling stuff, mainly properties of all sorts. We could be buying house and land, commercial, industrial, development sites, all of that sort of stuff.
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Let's talk about that. The process really starts with negotiating a contract.(...) Tell me about that.(...) So I think once you've identified what you're looking for, you picked your market, you've done your market research,
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you're looking at a number of properties, you start to formalise an offer, and you start to consider what your terms are. That's something that we can and do help people with, with identifying whether they need, say, a due diligence period, if there's any searches that they want first, all these things go into presenting an offer and formalising a contract. Yeah, that's actually pretty good, because you stop me with the contract, and there's a stage beforehand that you mentioned, which we don't help you with so much, but it's working out what you want, what represents good value to you, and doing your market research. But once that's done and we're doing contracts,
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can you, clients and listeners and viewers,(...) get in contact with you early in the process to look at contracts? That's what we'd recommend. So some people sign a contract, we don't see it till it's done, and that's fine too, but often people prefer to get our thoughts on a contract before they sign it, so that we can identify any issues, give them relevant advice, recommend any due diligence or investigations they might undertake to really help them understand what they're signing.(...) Because the Queensland market's a little bit different(...) around Australia, and the general practice in Queensland, it's not all the time, but particularly with House and Land, is real estate agents are out there, and they're preparing contracts, and quite often we'll have clients buy us and sell us signed contracts without a lawyer.
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But when a client wants to get advice, which we recommend you do, send the contract through to you, Georgia, you'll review it. Yeah, I'm always happy to have a look at a contract before our clients sign and go through it by phone, by email, whatever suits, and just really make sure the client understands what they're signing before they actually put pen to paper. So I know this bit ticks me off, it probably ticks you as well. People say, "Oh, well, aren't they just standard contracts?" And, you know, "Don't you just fill in the blanks?"
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Why is that not true? Well, there's a number of tricks to it, and I think some people don't fully understand what they're committing to, things like building and pest requirements, finance, timeframes, things like that. Sometimes people don't fully understand the standard terms of the contract that they might have liked to amend if they had understood that in advance. So these are the kinds of things that we look out for. We talk to our clients and say, "What are you trying to achieve here? "What's actually important?" And once we have that information, we can have a better look and help them to adjust the contract and negotiate amendments so that it better suits their circumstances. Yeah, and the trick is, the devil's in the detail in these contracts.(...) Like, if you don't complete all elements of the finance provision, there's three. The finance amount, the financier, and the date. If you miss one of them, it's not subject to finance, and it's a simple mistake. Similarly with special conditions. I mean, talk me through some of the problems with not having special conditions drafted by a lawyer who knows the meaning of a word may or will. So sometimes we find that agents draft special conditions for the parties. Maybe the parties draft them themselves even. And that's okay, except what we find is that when we actually go to give effect to that contract and we're conducting the conveyance and we're looking to settle the matter, sometimes there's ambiguity. Some parts of it aren't clear. We have to look at what people originally intended. And sometimes we find that what our client might have originally intended wasn't adequately captured in the special condition. And we could have avoided that had we seen it first. So the lawyers are the best ones to draft the special conditions. I would recommend sellers and buyers come to us first. We can always put them together and we'll draft them in a way that's technically very precise to avoid that kind of condition. Because the wording matters, right? Yeah, absolutely it does. And as you say, words like may, must, might, there's a lot of ambiguity that can be shoehorned into these things that we wanna try and avoid. Yeah, so one of those key components with contracts is we have to have certainty.(...) And certainty is a key component to getting a valid contract.
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Getting names right for buyers and sellers, that's one we come across a bit. And buyer entities. Sometimes people turn around and say, oh, my wife didn't sign, but she's buying it with me. Or I think I wanna buy this in the name of my company. I'm just gonna change it. And that's a process that we can help with, but it is an important process that needs to be done correctly. Otherwise you could be looking at double stamp duty, for example.(...) And largely, there's a little bit of flexibility in question, but largely we live with this system of time is of the essence. What does that mean? Well, it means that you have to do things when you're obliged to do them. And it's different in New South Wales. Our neighbours over the border are not burdened by this in the same way. But in Queensland, if you have a deadline to do something in a contract, if you don't do it by that date, you're immediately in breach and there can be really serious consequences. So we always advise our clients of critical deadlines, dates, things like that, to be aware of who's actioning what because things must be done in a timely manner. So be prepared, be on the front foot if you've got a finance or a building impest or a settlement date or whatever it might be, we've got to meet that date, right? Mm-hmm.
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I mean, I think that's really important to understand because in respect to property, the law varies from state to state.
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So everything's different. Yes, so we can help with New South Wales convincing but it is a different kettle of fish. It's a different scenario.
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It's a vastly different process. So sometimes people don't fully appreciate that when particularly being on the border here of Queensland and New South Wales, we can act both sides but it is a different process and we can guide our clients through the differences in that process. And getting through to settlement on a contract, thankfully we're now with electronic settlement which makes life easier. We do a lot externally with clients through verification of identity. Talk us through some of that technological stuff that we do here at OMB. Yeah, the technology has come a long way and it's really good when you get a call from a client and they say, "Oh, I'm an Australian citizen but I live in Hong Kong now." Or, "I'm traveling South America and I just need to sell this property and can you help me?" And the answer is yes because we do have some pretty stringent obligations that we have to comply with in terms of verifying the identity of our clients, getting documents signed, that kind of thing. But happily this can all be done electronically now. So we have different technologies that we use to send documents out for signing, different ways that we can identify our clients, make sure we're meeting our regulatory obligations and it can all be done remotely these days. Yeah, and a real word of warning to listeners and viewers. I probably can't stress this one enough.
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If you're being asked to send money,
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please phone the law firm, check the account number. The incidence of theft through electronic means is quite extraordinary and you stand to lose a lot. So double check, ring, read out the number, we'll read the number back to you. And the same when we're sending money back to clients.
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We've found that to be really important, Georgia. Yes, you do hear a lot about firms where money has, emails have been intercepted, money's gone where it shouldn't have that kind of thing. So we're always trying to communicate to our clients how important it is to just give us a call, talk to us if something comes up that looks unusual, or if you're about to move some money, just give us a call and make sure that it's going where it's supposed to.
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So the OMB Property Team values the importance of your property transaction. We strive to make your lives better. We strive to be a law firm that people love.(...) And to do that, we will want to give you personal service on a really important transaction, be it buying or selling.(...) Georgia, myself and the whole property team here would love to help you with either buying or selling any real estate. And we're available for phone call, email,(...) reach out to us, Georgia, we want to hear from them. We do, give us a call. We want to help people because it is important and there is a lot that can go wrong. And there's a lot of legislation around
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dealing with these transactions. So we'd like to help you. Georgia, thanks for your time today. I found it really informative. I'm sure you and I could talk all day, but we've got to go and get a coffee. We do, coffee balls. Thanks for coming on the OMB Law Board today. Thanks, Simon.(...) And thanks for joining us again. We look forward to seeing your next episode with the OMB Law Board.