Something not right here – You buy a condo and sign contract without checking with your lawyer

What do lawyers do while you wait for your Property title deed   

How can you find Singapore Conveyancing Lawyer? You can go to the law society of Singapore to find one. But be careful, do NOT ask your property agent for one, dishonest property agents are notorious for doing illegal legal kick-backs in which the lawyers over-charge you so as to be able to pay the dishonest property agents a commission.

You can also find a lawyer through the bank when you take a home loan singapore, and make sure that the lawyer’s fees as much as possible do not exceed the bank’s maximum legal subsidy. 

 Steps and Processes your Lawyer do before housing loan disbursement 

1. Conveyancing lawyers duties are to help you to ensure your interests are not undermined through carelessly signing a contract which is detriment to your interests. So such Singapore’s conveyance lawyers should help you to review all contracts pertaining to property purchase. 

2. Conduct title searches on the property which you are buying to make sure that the titles are unencumbered or unchallenged and can be delivered to you upon completion of the purchase of the property.

3. Check against government policies or regulations which may adversely affect the value of the property that you are buying. Such enquiries may include checks with URA, BCA, SLA, LTA or more.

4. Once all checks are complete, a caveat on the property title is lodged. This Caveat is then published and made available to the public. This serves to inform the public that you have a vested interest or claim in the property which has the corresponding property title. During this period, if there are other claims or counter claims on the property title, they must be raised at that time. Lodging a caveat increases the protection to the buyer from future legal challenges on the legality of the sale process. Your lawyer than lodges a Caveat after checks in Step 3. This caveat is made known and public and serves to inform the public of your claims and impending interests on the said property title. This is to give time to counter claims or legal challenges which may arise. Some buyers do not lodge caveats if they have utmost trust that the seller genuinely owns the rights to the titles.   

5. Your conveyance lawyer also helps to liaise with your bank from which you are taking your bank loan and make sure that terms and dates for disbursement of funds are met and ready on the date of property completion date. 

6. Liaising with CPF Board (or Lawyers on CPF board). If you intend to utilize Central provident fund (CPF) – A Singapore’s version of pension fund, your lawyer will check and ensure that the CPF funds are ready for drawdown in order to complete the property purchase within the completion time-lines. Sometimes, your lawyer may also be a lawyer on CPF panel of lawyers, that makes things potentially easier and faster (but CPF has internal processes for disbursing funds, these things still takes time).

7.   Your conveyancing lawyer must then make sure CPF board and bank is ready for the  disbursement of the funds, sort out the issues of who has first rights to the property, the bank or CPF and make sure that all CPF funds, bank funds are ready to be disbursed on the proposed property completion date. 

8. Completion of sale. This is a legal term which refers to all the payment of the agreed and contracted property sale price where you have fully paid all monies to the seller. The seller hands over to you the signed conveyance of title called the “Instrument of transfer” which effectively transfers the ownership of the titles from the seller to the buyer and hence the ownership of the property from sellers to buyers. At this stage, your Singapore bank loan is fully disbursed. Or in the case of a building under construction, whatever monies which should be paid during this stage of construction is disbursed.

 

Property Buyer Singapore Mortgage Consultants which can be located at sms (text) +65 9782 8606 are experienced in the property buying process and can act as Property Buyer advisors to guide buyers into avoiding dishonest property agents. Property Buyer Mortgage Consultants do NOT receive commission from Property transactions of Buying and Selling.