ACT welcomes electronic property settlements
By PEXA - 6 June 2020
The ACT property industry and its homebuyers and sellers will soon benefit from digital property transactions.
On 7 May 2020, the ACT Government passed legislation to welcome online settlements into the Territory, bringing the property industry one step closer to achieving the Council of Australian Governments’ (COAG), now known as the National Cabinet, vision of a nationally consistent electronic conveyancing solution.
As the sector progresses, Australians across the country will increasingly benefit from fast, safe, and more efficient property settlements.
PEXA, Australia’s electronic property settlement platform, was formed in 2010 as part of COAG’s seamless economic reform agenda and to date is one of the most successful examples of states and territories collaborating as they came together to bring property transactions into the 21st Century. It provides lawyers, conveyancers and financial institutions an online platform to lodge documents and complete financial settlement on behalf of Australian homebuyers and sellers – creating a vastly improved property settlement experience.
Currently, more than 70% of Australia’s property transactions are completed online via PEXA, supporting 20,000 families per week to settle their property.
PEXA’s CEO, Glenn King said, “PEXA is committed to providing a secure, digital property settlement solution for Australia, protecting the country’s $7.2 trillion asset class. To date, more than five million property transactions have been safely completed online. We continue to deliver on our national promise and are thrilled to bring the efficiencies of a digital platform to ACT and its homebuyers and sellers.”
ACT joins Victoria, New South Wales, Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland in implementing this world first technology for property settlements. More than 8,800 practitioner firms and more than 150 financial institutions are already registered to use PEXA and are reaping the benefits for their organisations and their customers. With electronic property settlements, homebuyers and sellers have more certainty of settlement from a safer, more efficient system.
Elringtons Lawyers has offices in both the ACT and NSW and is looking forward to the expansion of electronic settlements into the ACT and the removal of dual processing (paper and digital transactions) from its operations.
Shalini Sree, Director and Head of Property and Commercial said, “We’ve been using PEXA for the past two years. It’s enhanced our service and provided much greater benefits to our clients. Our sellers receive funds into their accounts within minutes of settlement and our purchasers’ names are on title almost instantly. ACT adopting e-Conveyancing will streamline everything for us and enables us to provide the benefits of digital settlements to all of our clients. Once e-Conveyancing is fully implemented in the ACT, we will no longer have to train our staff in two processes. The paper process has a lot of unnecessary touchpoints that can result in errors, transacting on PEXA significantly reduces this and brings us one step closer to having a completely paperless office.”