Buying a subdivided property

My partner and I have recently purchased our first home in the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne.
The house is perfect and we were never told of the issues that would come to the settlement process. We signed the contract organised a settlement date which was meant to be last Friday 9th September 2011.
Our conveyancer has not been very helpful in dealing with this situation either, saying that the house is on a block in which the vendors have subdivided and built at the back. This is now they house they will live in. they have also moved in already.
Our issue is that we too thought we would be moving in on the proposed settlement date until the Monday before we were meant to be moving we got a call from our conveyancer saying this wouldnt happen due to the registartion of subdivision not yet being lodged. The one and only letter we received from our conveyancor told us very vagly that the vendors solicitors plan on lodging for subdivision in the next few weeks. and then said something about "in anticipation of settlement happening soon, get these forms signed"
Being a first homebuyer and not someone who understands or is expected to know and understand teh legal jargon (hence why we are paying a conveyancer to explain this to us) assumed this was normal and we just needed to fill in the forms and sign them. This was the friday before settlement we got them. We then got a call (only have we been communicated via calls and only my partner has recieved them, no emails and no written communication followed up) to tell us settlement will not go ahead on Friday.
We were pretty annoyed and called the conveyancer up to ask her questions etc and wanted to have a face to face meeting so we could both be there, meet with her and find out how much we are paying her etc. She was ok with this and we met on the Thursday night.
We then were ok gave her the benifit of the doubt as she was nice in person.
Well things just continued to get worse from there and she once again became hard to deal with. in the meeting she said settlement should be the following Friday (17th September) if all goes to plan with the subdivision. We also had more things being sent to us which actually were nothing to do with subdivision it was all this legal stuff to sign from the lender/bank's lawyers.
We receieved this on the Friday and were expected to have it in early teh following week. being the weekend there wasnt much we could do in terms of asking questions.
We tried calling our conveyancer on Monday evening (we both work fulltime) after we went over the forms and didnt understand everything. No answer and when she communicated next (not sure if she was called or she called us) we were rudley informed of her strict business hours 9-5.
Anyway, she told us that subdivision should be lodged on the wednesday and then settlement hopefully should happen on the Friday.
We did everything right without our conveyancers help. when I called her to find out about an update Wednesday evening I had not answer so left a message, I again tried Thursday around midday and finally had a call back. I was told that the forms were lodged on Wednesday and settlement will hopefully be the following Friday (as if i shouldve known this already and she said she had already told my partner this, which she hadnt cos he hadnt spoken to her) when he did speak to her she told him they had been lodged on Tuesday....Go figure.

So the main reason for this is when will we settle, the section 32 enables it to be remained open with no exact answer on when the latest can be. Our conveyancer hasnt been helpful at all and makes us feel bad if we ask her a question. This is the first time for us and we dont have any idea what we are doing.

Can anyone help us or direct us to a website which may give us more answers since we are not getting them from the person we are paying!

Thankyou for reading this long wingy message.
We are just both lucky we are living with my parents otherwise i dont know what we would do.
 
So let me get this straight - you have bought a property but the subdivision hasn't occurred yet? If you want to check on a subdivision you can ring the Land Titles Office. Didn't your conveyancer check all this for you beforehand? It's not unusual to buy a property subject to subdivision (such as off-the-plan) but everything must be completed prior to settlement.
 
It appears that the land has not yet been subdivided, therefore there is not yet an individual title to your purchased property

Have a close look at your Contract of Sale (not the Sec 32 - Vendors Satement)
In the Contract there will probably/should be a clause that states when settlement is.
This is often ie 9th September OR within 14 days of Plan of Subdivision being registered
However if the settlement date in the contract has been specified as 9th Sept with no other clause the Vendor is obliged to settle on this date or penalties may apply (once again check the contract) and is therefore their reasponsibility to ensure that the Plan of Sub is registered in time.

Once you have checked your contract and if no "OR within 14 days of Plan of Subdivision being registered" or similar clause is there, discuss further with your conveyancer and have them serve a notice to complete.
The vendor will then have 14 days to complete the settlement before the Contract becomes null & void

Note: The above is not Legal advice and if your conveyancer does not appear to be co-operating (doing their job) go and see a solicitor
 
Hi Nicky,

I feel for you. Buying a first home can be pretty stressful and when things like these come up, it's easy to be lost!

In such a case like this you might want to talk to a solicitor rather than a conveyancer, especially given you haven't found your current conveyancer much help.

Let us know how it turns out. Good luck.
 
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