What are searches in Melbourne conveyancing?

You’ve shopped around and received a few Melbourne conveyancing quotes which tells you the conveyancing fee is made up of:

a professional fee for the conveyancing work.
disbursements, comprising mostly of search costs.

It leaves you wondering, what are disbursements and search costs? It’s not always explained in the conveyancing quote from a Melbourne conveyancer.

What are conveyancing disbursements?

Disbursements are out-of-pocket expenses that the conveyancer incurs upfront to prepare for your Victorian property settlement. The conveyancer passes on the cost to you in your conveyancing bill.

Disbursements include, for example, printing, postage, lodgement and filing fees, and property searches.

Most conveyancers in Melbourne will charge you disbursements in addition to their professional fee. Your conveyancing bill it will display the conveyancing disbursements as a separate line item to the professional fee.

To provide our conveyancing clients with complete price certainty, we charge our clients one fixed fee inclusive of standard search costs.

What are conveyancing searches?

Whether you are buying or selling in Melbourne or beyond, your conveyancer will need to look up information about the property. In other words, they need to conduct searches about the property.

For a seller, it is necessary for a Melbourne conveyancing lawyer to prepare your sale documents (ie., a contract and vendor statement), so that your vendor statement contains all the disclosures that you need to make by law about your property to prospective buyers in the Victorian property market.

These disclosures include, for example, restrictions affecting the title of the property, rates that run with the property and permits issued for work performed within 7 years before the sale.

For a buyer, your conveyancer will look up the property rates that run with the property before settlement. This includes water rates, council rates, land tax and owners corporation levies, if any.

Your conveyancer needs to know the rates and levies that run with the property to work out your contribution towards to rates and levies at settlement as the incoming owner, and the outstanding amounts that the seller needs to pay at settlement.

The searches come with a cost. The rating authorities will charge your Melbourne conveyancer a fee to obtain the rating information which your conveyancer will incur as an upfront cost.

Your conveyancer will pass on the search costs to you, which will form part of your overall disbursement costs.

Melbourne Conveyancing professional fee

A Melbourne conveyancer will charge you a professional fee for the work they perform to prepare for your property settlement. In most cases, the Melbourne conveyancer’s professional fee is fixed, provided you do not hire them to complete additional services.

A responsible Melbourne conveyancer will send you a cost agreement that outlines the scope of work included in their fixed conveyancing fee.

Make sure you read the conveyancer’s cost agreement before you sign to ensure you’re across what work is included and excluded in their conveyancing service.