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Settlement-week checklist for the ACT

Completion week in the ACT is a short corridor between “we exchanged” and “we have keys”. The contract calls the day completion more often than it calls it settlement, but the household still says settlement, and the removalists certainly do. Mei’s checklist is the domestic sequence: who you telephone, which papers you put in one folder, and what you do not leave until the morning. It is not the legal work your conveyancer is doing in parallel.

Start from the completion date in the exchanged contract. If that date moved by a variation, the variation is the date. A date in an old text message is how boxes arrive at an empty house you do not yet own.

• Write the completion date, time and place, as your conveyancer states them, on paper.
• Ask your conveyancer what funds you must provide, in what form, and the day before they are due.
• Ask whether a lender is attending to the funds and who at the lender is the contact. Do not assume.
• Confirm the exact dollar balance with your conveyancer. Do not invent it from the price alone.
• Arrange building insurance questions with an insurer if your conveyancer says risk has moved or is about to. We do not sell cover.
• Book removalists for after the time keys are actually promised, with a margin.
• Tell utilities you have a proposed start date, and correct it if completion slips.
• Pack a folder: identification, the contract, your conveyancer’s last email, and the inclusions list.
• Plan a walk-through if one is agreed, and take the inclusions list rather than your memory.
• Agree who collects keys, from whom, and where.
• Keep the day free of other major errands. Completion days run late for reasons that are not personal.

The week before the date in the contract

Ask your conveyancer for a plain schedule. What will they do on each of the last few days, and what do they need from you? Typical needs are authority, cleared funds for the balance and for duty if duty is payable, and confirmation of names. Duty and any Home Buyer Concession are not calculated on this page. If concession or duty is part of your file, your conveyancer will point you at the ACT Revenue Office process and at the figures that apply to your transaction date. Ask them. Do not ask a group chat.

If a lender is providing funds, ask your conveyancer whether the lender’s packet matches the completion date. A public webpage, however carefully you read our four questions about offset and redraw, is not the officer who releases funds. Telephone the channel your conveyancer names. If there is a shortfall, you will hear about it in dollars that must be solved with money you actually have, not with a headline rate. This guide will not guess the shortfall.

Re-read the inclusions schedule. If a pre-completion inspection is allowed, use it to check that the dishwasher is still there and that the garden has not become a depot. Photograph differences and send them to your conveyancer the same day. A complaint made after keys, about an item you could have seen, is a weaker conversation.

Funds, risk, and keys

The balance of the price is paid as the contract and your conveyancer direct. In Canberra that practical payment is organised so the seller’s side and the titles side can complete. Ask where you send funds and ask for the request in writing. Read account details twice. Call the conveyancer on a known number if an email with new account details arrives unexpectedly. That habit is ordinary fraud hygiene. It is not a dramatic claim about your particular firm.

Ask again about risk and insurance. Some buyers arrange cover from exchange, some from completion, depending on the clause and on the insurer’s rules. We cannot tell you which policy to buy. We can tell you that “I’ll do it next week” is a sentence people regret when a storm arrives on the night before completion. Make the phone call on the day your conveyancer recommends, and write down the reference number the insurer gives you.

Keys are not a mystic event. Someone has them: the agent, the seller, a building manager for a unit. Ask who will hand them over, and what identification they will want. If you are a unit buyer, ask whether a fob for the garage is separate from the front door, and whether the owners corporation office must be told you are the new owner. That introduction is a first-month task as well. Do not lose the fob in a moving box labelled “kitchen”.

On the day

Keep your phone charged and stay reachable. Conveyancers settle problems in an hour that you would rather spend labelling boxes. If they ask for a figure or a signature, respond. Do not go to a cinema. It sounds obvious. It is the advice people need.

Do not cancel a rental or a storage booking until your conveyancer says completion has occurred. “It will be fine by three” is not the same sentence as “it has completed”. Agents can be optimistic. Your conveyancer’s confirmation is the one you wait for. Then collect keys. Then change nothing structural on the first night. You own a leasehold interest, not a permit to knock out a wall. The purpose clause and the approvals are still in force on day one.

If completion does not happen, ask your conveyancer what the contract provides and what they will send the other side. Do not abuse the agent. Do not announce on social media that a bank “failed you”. You may not yet know whether the delay is funds, a title notation, a payout figure, or a document. Wait for the cause. Then follow the notice the contract actually allows.

The first calls after you are in

Once you are told completion has occurred, work the short list: keys, insurer confirmation, electricity and water and gas accounts in the right name, a locksmith if you want the locks changed, and a note to the owners corporation if there is one. Postal redirection can wait a day. A missed water account is more annoying than a late magazine.

File the contract, the lease copy, the searches and your conveyancer’s final letter in one place you can find when a lender, a Territory office, or a future buyer asks. The first-month guide picks up from here: rates accounts, lease conditions you still have to live with, and the ordinary admin of a new household. Completion week gets you through the door. It does not finish the reading.

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