Selling a property in South Australia: the order things happen

Your agent can have photos taken on Monday and a board up by Friday. What nobody can do is get you to settlement without a Form 1, built almost entirely out of information other people hold.

Your price and your timing are yours to decide. The Form 1 moves at the speed of councils, water authorities and the land registry, and does not hurry up because you have an auction date booked.

Start the Form 1 before you start the campaign

Section 7 of the Land and Business (Sale and Conveyancing) Act 1994 requires a vendor to serve a signed statement on the purchaser at least 10 clear days before the date of settlement. Clear days, not business days. It sets out the buyer's cooling-off rights, all mortgages, charges and prescribed encumbrances affecting the land, and, if you acquired your interest within 12 months before the contract date, the transactions that got you there.

SA.GOV.AU sums up the contents as title details, mortgages, easements, zoning and outgoings such as water rates. The Land and Business (Sale and Conveyancing) Regulations 2025, which replaced the 2010 regulations on 1 September 2025, add a schedule most sellers never think about: strata particulars, building indemnity insurance, asbestos, aluminium composite cladding, court orders, environment protection matters. None of that sits in your filing cabinet, and the answers arrive on someone else's timetable.

If an agent acts for you, section 9 puts the inquiries on them. They sign a certificate that the particulars are complete and accurate, or accurate subject to stated exceptions, and you make sure it is attached when the statement is served. Selling privately moves the burden: SA.GOV.AU notes that your buyer's agent certifies the Form 1 if they have one, and if neither of you does, the responsibility is yours. Get it wrong and section 15 lets a court avoid the contract or award damages against you or the agent.

Sellers who have bought in Victoria expect disclosure first, because there the section 32 must be given to the purchaser before they sign. Here the Form 1 can follow the contract. That is not the freedom it sounds like: the date you serve it starts your buyer's cooling-off clock. Getting your Form 1 prepared is the first phone call, not the fifth. Our guide to the Form 1 covers the document.

A change after service restarts the buyer's clock

Section 10 says the statement must be accurate as at the date it is served. If circumstances change after service but before the purchaser signs, it is defective until a notice of amendment is served. Section 10(2) then treats the statement as served on the date of that notice, and SA.GOV.AU confirms the buyer gets a further 2 clear business days.

So a late discovery is not fatal, but it moves more than the cooling-off clock. That new deemed service date still has to sit at least 10 clear days before settlement, so a late amendment can push settlement itself.

Private treaty and auction are different sales, not different marketing

Private treaty. Your buyer gets 2 clear business days of cooling off unless they sign it away on a legal practitioner's certificate. SA.GOV.AU confirms it begins when they receive the Form 1 or from the date the contract was signed, whichever happens last. Late service has a sting. If the Form 1 is not served at least 2 clear business days before settlement, the form tells the buyer the cooling-off notice may be served at any time before settlement. Nobody can cool off once settlement has happened, so it is not unlimited, but the right to walk stays alive right up to the settlement table.

Auction. Section 5(7) removes cooling off where the sale is by auction, or where the property is passed in and a bidder signs on the same day. In exchange, disclosure moves earlier. Section 11 requires the Form 1 to be available for public perusal at the agent's or auctioneer's office for at least 3 consecutive business days immediately before the auction, and at the venue for at least 30 minutes before it starts. The buyer's information notice (form R3) runs on the same timetable and should be attached to it.

Auction conditions are generally a 10% deposit and 30-day settlement, and you are tied down on price. Under section 24J(1)(ba) your reserve must never exceed 110% of the selling price your sales agency agreement records as acceptable to you, and section 20(5a) stops you lifting that figure by varying the agreement.

Watch the pre-auction offer. SA.GOV.AU confirms cooling off does apply to a successful offer made before the auction, unless the buyer waives it, and an independent legal practitioner must sign the prescribed form. A registered conveyancer cannot sign that certificate, so a buyer who wants to waive needs a solicitor before they sign.

You cannot hold a real deposit until cooling off ends

Under section 5(5), a vendor or stakeholder who demands or requires payment from a land purchaser of anything beyond option money or a deposit of $100 before the cooling-off period ends commits an offence. Section 5(4) then returns the buyer's money if they cool off, apart from option money and a deposit that did not exceed $100.

So the most a South Australian buyer can lose by changing their mind in time is $100. In Victoria they forfeit $100 or 0.2 per cent of the purchase price, whichever is greater. On a $750,000 sale that is $1,500 there and $100 here.

Under section 23 an agent cannot demand, receive or retain commission where the contract is rescinded under the Act. SA.GOV.AU states it plainly: it is against the law for an agent to be paid commission if a buyer cools off. The carve-out in section 23(2) is narrow. If you and the same buyer later sign a fresh contract, commission can be payable on that one.

Our Victorian cooling-off guide shows how differently that moment plays out there.

Your mortgage, the adjustments, then settlement

Settlement here is usually 4 to 12 weeks after contracts are signed, negotiable between you and the buyer and recorded in the contract.

If there is a mortgage on the title, your bank controls when it is discharged. South Australian settlements run through an Electronic Lodgement Network Operator workspace where the discharge, the transfer and the money land on the same day, so your lender has to be in it and ready. Send the discharge authority the moment the contract is binding, not in settlement week.

Rates and outgoings are adjusted on the day. SA.GOV.AU gives the general rule: the vendor is responsible up until and including midnight before the date of settlement, and the purchaser from the date of settlement, subject to what your contract says. Check those figures. A water bill you prepaid for a period your buyer will own comes back to you through the adjustment.

The transfer document here is the Memorandum of Transfer, lodged with the Land Titles Office, and registration can take up to 2 weeks after settlement. That throws sellers who expect title to change hands the same afternoon. Your money does not wait for registration.

The Registrar-General mandated electronic lodgement from 3 August 2020, with a further mandate from 8 April 2024, and both PEXA and Sympli operate here. Because settlement and lodgement happen inside the workspace, nobody needs to be in a room in Adelaide. We are registered in South Australia with Consumer and Business Services under the Conveyancers Act 1994 (SA), licensed separately in Victoria, and act for South Australian sellers remotely from Cranbourne.

Your order of operations

1. Get the Form 1 started, before the agent and before the photos.
2. Order the certificates and searches it needs, then chase the slow ones.
3. Sign the agency agreement knowing its acceptable selling price caps your auction reserve and cannot be lifted.
4. Have the Form 1 certified and ready, and on display for the auction periods above.
5. Make the buyer's information notice (form R3) available at inspections.
6. Take offers in writing and signed, and have the contract read first.
7. Hold no more than $100 by way of deposit until the cooling-off period expires.
8. Serve any notice of amendment properly, allowing a further 2 clear business days.
9. Send the discharge authority to your lender as soon as the contract is binding.
10. Check the rates and water adjustments on the settlement statement, then hand over the keys.

Questions sellers ask

Can I advertise before the Form 1 is finished?

Yes. Marketing is not the constraint. A Form 1 served late is what hurts you, because it either delays settlement or stretches your buyer's cooling-off window.

My buyer cooled off. Do I keep anything?

Almost certainly not. Section 5(4) returns what they paid, apart from option money and a deposit that did not exceed $100. Since section 5(5) made demanding more than $100 an offence, $100 is the ceiling. Your agent cannot keep commission on that contract either.

Can my agent prepare the transfer and save me a step?

No. Under sections 27 and 28 it is an offence for anyone other than a legal practitioner or registered conveyancer to prepare a conveyancing instrument for fee or reward, and a separate offence for an agent, or someone in a prescribed relationship to one, to prepare it. Maximum penalty $20,000 either way. Note who is left in. Under the Conveyancers Act 1994 (SA) a conveyancer is by definition someone other than a legal practitioner, so solicitors do this work without conveyancer registration. We compare the options in conveyancer or solicitor in South Australia.

The sale is part of a separation, or a deceased estate. Can you act?

We can do the conveyancing, including a transfer out of an estate once the grant has issued. We cannot advise on a family law property settlement, or on wills, probate, estate planning or tax, and we cannot act in a dispute or appear in a court or tribunal. Those need a solicitor or an accountant, ideally before you list.

Talk to us before the sign goes up

Ring us before you sign the agency agreement. We can get the Form 1 under way while you are still interviewing agents, so it is ready instead of holding everyone up.

Our office hours are Monday to Friday, and weekends are available by appointment. Because South Australian settlement and lodgement run electronically, where we sit makes no difference to your sale. To talk it through, ask us for a quote or get in touch.

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.