Meeting our solicitor

We made an appointment with our solicitor. The solicitor’s office was on the top floor of one of Canberra’s few tall buildings. We took the elevator to the top and got out. The office was on the next floor up. That’s odd, and a thought occurred to me. I began to think of the movie “Being John Malkovich” and that weird seven and a half floor thing. We climbed the remaining stairs to the office. Glossy stairs, shiny handrail, gleaming black marble everywhere. The office was perfectly neat and spotless. We sat on the plush leather couch and waited for our solicitor. It was such a surprising contrast being led into our solicitor’s room to see an untidy tousled haired unshaven man. So long as he can do the job. That’s all that counts.

We looked over the contract with the solicitor. Property contracts are boring documents with few interesting sections. Though their detailed maps are worth a second look, and documents showing the history of the property makes interesting reading. Some of the maps and diagrams are ancient, and you get an opportunity to check out all the previous owners. There’s a lot of legal mumbo jumbo to look through. It was a tedious meeting. Our solicitor was slow and he pondered over things that didn’t interest us.

The property has an access lane at the back. I don’t know what the history of that was; possibly something to do with sewerage and access. Most of the properties have a driveway leading from the lane, with some having a carport. Our property had a garage that was accessed from the lane. That was in addition to the driveway that came off the street. It was unusual. Our solicitor studied it and pondered the situation, and took pains to point it out. Yes we knew the set up. Despite us telling him we’d seen the property, walked around it, and knew about the lane our solicitor pondered some more and took pains to discuss the easement and describe the hazards.

In some ways it would be good to learn how to undertake your own conveyance processes. There are do-it-yourself kits available, though I’ve never been game to try it. Perhaps if someone deals in a lot of property it might be worthwhile. There was a news item on the weekend about a real estate scam that caught my attention.  If it's true the solicitors didn't do much of a job in checking ownership.

The document had to be signed and the deposit paid. Up until this point no money had exchanged hands. And that wasn’t going to happen until my finance was approved. We asked the solicitor about making the sale conditional on securing finance. This was not possible, he said. I was amazed. Properties can put purchased subject to the sale of another property. So why wasn’t this possible. I don’t know but it was annoying.

There was a clause in the contract, our solicitor pointed out, which would hit us hard if we backed out of the deal for some reason, or did not proceed on the specified dates. We asked the solicitor to sit on the contract for a while. There was no way it was going to be signed with that sort of clause, at least, not yet. Not until finance had been approved. The waiting continues.