If I sold my own house and did my own conveyancing, apart from this being a bad idea, where would the buyers deposit be stored if their was no "stakeholder"?
Selling a House Privately and Doing My Own Conveyancing
thepigs on 26/11/2014 - 19:48
Comments
It's perfectly legal, and a lot of people do their own, but a pain in the butt for someone who has never done it before.
We bought a kit to do it ourselves, but had hassles with the lender from day one, so decided we didn't need the extra headache.
Thanks. Was thinking that the lawyers wold have hated that it could be done without them and closed it all up for themselves.
They fought tooth and nail to keep the property settlements biz to themselves. Same with mediators in family law now, they hate those too, means they have to only lease Beemers and not Bentleys. ;-p And holiday in Paris or NY rather than Monaco and Lake Como.
I've done my own conveyancing (a long time ago) but I was always the buyer not the seller so usure about where the deposit would go….
go for it tho and save yourself some costs if you know what you are doing!We have one of these somewhere that we didn't end up using - lender was being a pita from the start, so we figured one less hassle was worthwhile.
The kit did seem fairly comprehensive, though the info given only covered one state, so we'd have had to find all the info ourselves (not hard to do.)
I'd have to dig it out, but it probably does cover the question being asked.
yeah i have that kit. Their phone support guy recommends setting up a both-to-sign joint bank account.
Dunno if this is correct but if you have an agent maybe you can have it held in the agent's trust account. But from the sound of it you are not using an agent.
The buyers' solicitor could hold onto it in their trust account. They cannot release it to their client unless they have your consent or confirmation that the matter has settled (or a court has ruled in their favour).
If there is no agent and no solicitor, then you should not request that a deposit be paid.
ta. so the deposit is primarily to pay the agent in the case of buyer default? would the buyer's solicitor charge me a fee for keeping the deposit, or have any claim of their own over the deposit?
Not unless you have agreed for it to be released to the buyer, in which case their solicitor may assert a lien if the buyer has not paid them for their services - ie, they can assert a lien against their client, but not against you.
The whole point of the deposit is that its not your money yet, therefore it gets paid to someone who has some overriding ethical obligation to not release it until appropriate.
The deposit is used as surety that the buyer won't just piss off and say they are not going through with it and disappear after they've signed the contract. People usually don't want to walk away from many thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of dollars.
The agent usually take their commission from the deposit because they are usually holding the deposit in their trust account. So they take their commission and transfer the balance to the seller after the settlement has occurred.
Some Solicitors or Conveyancers don't have trust accounts (because it's time consuming and costly to maintain a trust account / audit etc). If the buyer's Solicitor/Conveyancer has a trust account, they won't charge you for holding the deposit. If they do not have a trust account, then I'd suggest you don't ask for no deposit or take a nominal deposit, of say $500.00-$1,000.00, that sum the Purchaser is likely to accept just paying you directly or maybe the Purchaser will want to pay by deposit bond guarantee anyway, which will solve all your deposit problems.
Good luck with everything. Asking on an internet forum probably isn't an auspicious start to doing your own conveyancing.
Interesting question. Private sellers have some way of doing it, may still require a lawyer (thank them for that), by law. Use their trust account.
Don't think many people ever do their own conveyancing, probably not even legal.