Conveyancer or solicitor in South Australia: which one do you need?

For most South Australian house purchases and sales, a registered conveyancer can do the whole job. That is not a budget option or a workaround. South Australia built a separate conveyancing profession with its own Act and its own regulator, and ordinary residential transactions are exactly what it was set up to handle.

So the useful question is not which professional is cheaper. It is whether your matter stays inside conveyancing work, or crosses into something a conveyancer is not permitted to touch.

The short answer

Buying or selling a house, a unit or a block of land in South Australia, with nobody in dispute about anything? A registered conveyancer can take it from contract to registration. Pre-contract advice, searches, the Form 1, paying the duty at settlement, and lodgement.

You need a solicitor when the matter involves a court or tribunal, a live dispute, a deceased estate, a trust or company structure, or a family law property settlement. That is not false modesty. Those matters sit outside what a conveyancer's registration covers, and a conveyancer who took them on would be working beyond it.

What "registered conveyancer" means here

The word matters. South Australia registers conveyancers. Victoria licenses them. So if a website talks about being "licensed in South Australia", ask what the firm actually holds, because that is not the term the South Australian system uses.

Conveyancers in South Australia are required to be registered pursuant to Part 2 of the Conveyancers Act 1994 (SA), and Consumer and Business Services is the body responsible for registering conveyancers, real estate agents, property managers, sales representatives and auctioneers.

The trigger for needing that registration is broad. The national business licence service puts it in one line: you must be registered as a conveyancer if you prepare legal documents when property is transferred to a new owner. The same entry names the current rules as the Conveyancers Act 1994 and the Conveyancers Regulations 2025, names Consumer and Business Services as the agency that administers them, and sets the registration to run for a year at a time with an annual renewal.

That annual renewal is worth knowing about as a consumer. Registration is not a certificate someone earned once in 2009 and hung on a wall. It has to be kept alive every year, and it can lapse.

Two different routes to the same desk

Here is the part that confuses people, and the part most interstate content gets wrong.

A registered conveyancer's authority to prepare your transfer comes from that CBS registration. A solicitor's authority comes from somewhere else entirely. In South Australia a lawyer must be admitted to practise as a barrister and solicitor in the Supreme Court of South Australia and hold a practising certificate through the Law Society of South Australia. Once they do, they are entitled to prepare legal documents, advise clients, and represent clients in all South Australian courts.

Two separate systems, two separate regulators, and both of them lead to someone who can lawfully do your conveyancing. The Law Handbook treats them as the genuine alternatives: while you can prepare your own documents, given the complexity of doing so, it is wise to engage a lawyer or conveyancer to make sure they are correct.

One practical consequence: if you search the CBS conveyancer register for a solicitor's firm and find nothing, that is not a red flag. Solicitors are authorised through the legal profession system, not conveyancer registration. Check them with the Law Society instead.

What a conveyancer does on a South Australian purchase

The work starts before you sign, not after. The Law Handbook confirms a conveyancer can give pre-contract advice to prospective purchasers, and sensibly suggests you ask what that advice will cost first.

After that, the job runs through the contract and the Form 1. Where an agent acts for the vendor, the Form 1 is prepared by that agent, who must certify that the inquiries were properly made and the details are accurate. Your conveyancer is the one who reads it properly, checks it against the title and tells you what the encumbrances actually mean for you. We go through that document line by line in our guide to the Form 1 vendor disclosure statement.

Then comes settlement, where the purchase price is collected and outstanding rates and taxes are paid, and any mortgages, caveats or other interests are discharged so that you take clear title. After that you become the registered proprietor.

Nobody at the registry will help you do this yourself. Registry staff cannot help members of the public prepare their documents, and long delays follow if documents are prepared incorrectly. Land Services SA now holds all certificates of title electronically, and duplicate certificates of title are no longer issued in South Australia. Our property purchases service page sets out each stage.

When a solicitor is the right call

Being straight about this is more useful to you than pretending otherwise.

Anything heading to a court or tribunal. Conveyancers do not appear in court. A solicitor is entitled to represent clients in all South Australian courts. If your purchase has turned into a fight about a failed settlement, a misdescription or damage to the property, that is a lawyer's matter.

Waiving your cooling-off rights. This one is specific to South Australia and it catches people out on pre-auction offers. In South Australia the cooling-off period expires at the end of the second clear business day from the day the Form 1 is served on the purchaser, and there is no cooling-off period at all if the property is bought at auction. To waive those rights, the same page is blunt: a purchaser needs to obtain a certificate from a solicitor stating that the purchaser has been advised about the ramifications of waiving. A conveyancer cannot sign it. No amount of goodwill changes that. Our South Australian cooling-off guide covers how the window is counted, which is less obvious than it sounds.

Deceased estates. Obtaining a grant of probate means registering and uploading the estate's information into the CourtSA online portal, either personally or through a lawyer. A conveyancer can transfer the property once the estate is sorted out. Getting the estate to that point is not conveyancing work.

Wills, estate planning and trusts. See a solicitor.

Family law property settlements. See a family lawyer.

Structuring, tax and duty planning. Buying through a company or a trust, self-managed super fund purchases, foreign investment approval, or deciding how to hold a property for tax reasons. That is work for a solicitor, an accountant, or both. A conveyancer implements the structure you have been advised to use. We do not advise you on which one to pick.

Side by side

	Registered conveyancer	Solicitor
Where the authority comes from	Registration with CBS under the Conveyancers Act 1994 (SA)	Admission to the Supreme Court of SA plus a practising certificate
Where you check them	CBS Online Licensing Register	Law Society of South Australia
Pre-contract advice on the contract and Form 1	Yes	Yes
Prepare, settle and lodge your transfer	Yes	Yes
Represent you in a South Australian court	No	Yes
Sign the certificate that lets you waive cooling off	No	Yes
Probate and deceased estates	No	Yes
Family law property settlements	No	Yes
Trusts, company structuring and tax advice	No	Yes, or an accountant

And because plenty of South Australians deal with Victorian agents, lenders and relatives, the regulatory contrast in short:

	South Australia	Victoria
What the credential is called	Registration	Licence
Governing Act	Conveyancers Act 1994 (SA)	Conveyancers Act 2006 (Vic)
Regulator	Consumer and Business Services	Business Licensing Authority, with Consumer Affairs Victoria

If you are comparing the two systems properly, our Victorian version of this article covers that side.

How to check a registration before you hand anything over

Do this. It takes two minutes and almost nobody bothers.

Anyone can search the Consumer and Business Services Online Licensing Register, which holds the details of registered conveyancers as well as agents and sales representatives. The licence search page sits behind a short "confirm you are not a robot" step, then lets you look someone up.

Search the business name or the registration number. If a firm will not give you a registration number when you ask for one, that tells you something on its own.

Being in South Australia when your conveyancer is not

You do not need someone down the road. South Australian conveyancing is now an electronic process, and that changed what geography means.

Land Services SA records that electronic conveyancing was mandated from 3 August 2020, with a much larger expansion on 8 April 2024, so that the mandated dealings now make up roughly 92 per cent of the total dealings lodged. The work happens in a workspace run by an Electronic Lodgement Network Operator, where practitioners prepare the instruments to register the change, settle the money including payment of duties and taxes, and lodge with Land Services SA. PEXA and Sympli are both approved in South Australia. A paper lodgement channel stays open for self-represented parties.

In practice that means your settlement is a scheduled electronic event, not a room full of people swapping cheques.

Wise Step Conveyancing is registered in South Australia with Consumer and Business Services and acts for South Australian clients remotely, working in those electronic workspaces. Our office is at Office 4, Level 1, 105A High Street, Cranbourne, Victoria, and it is our only one. We do not have a South Australian office and the electronic system means we do not need one. What we do need, and hold, is the South Australian registration that lets us act for you there.

Common questions

Is a conveyancer cheaper than a solicitor in South Australia?

It varies by firm and by matter, so the honest answer is to compare the actual quotes in front of you. More useful is knowing how conveyancing is priced at all. You are usually paying a professional fee for the work, plus disbursements passed through at cost, such as title searches, council and water certificates, and Land Services SA lodgement and registration fees. The stamp duty itself is separate again, paid to RevenueSA out of your funds at settlement. Ask for those parts in writing before you engage anyone.

Can a conveyancer give me advice before I sign the contract?

Yes. The Law Handbook says directly that a conveyancer can give pre-contract advice to prospective purchasers, and suggests you get a quote for that advice first. It is worth the hour. A lot of the expensive surprises in a property purchase were sitting in the contract or the Form 1 before anyone signed.

Can my conveyancer sign the certificate so I can waive cooling off?

No. That certificate has to come from a solicitor, who must confirm they have advised you about what you are giving up. If an agent is pushing you to waive cooling off on a pre-auction offer, that is your signal to get a lawyer on the phone, not to sign faster.

Does my conveyancer have to be in Adelaide?

No. Since electronic conveyancing was mandated, the lodgement and the financial settlement both happen in an online workspace. What matters is that whoever acts for you is registered in South Australia, not which postcode their desk is in.

What if my straightforward purchase stops being straightforward?

Tell us early. If a matter turns into a dispute or an estate question partway through, we will say so and point you to the right adviser rather than pressing on. Better than finding out at settlement.

Talk it through before you sign

If you are looking at a South Australian property and are not sure whether your situation is ordinary conveyancing or something more, send us the contract and the Form 1 and ask. We will tell you plainly, including if the answer is that you need a solicitor.

Get in touch or request a quote, and we will let you know what your matter involves before you commit to anything.

This article is general information about South Australian conveyancing and is not legal advice for your particular transaction. Speak to us about your specific circumstances.