Buying a home is the biggest investment or financial outlay that
most of us will make in a lifetime. It is critical to your
financial future that you make well-informed decisions when you
purchase a property, whether it be for your own home or an
investment.
The Contract for Sale of Land basically follows the common law
of "caveat emptor"– let the buyer beware. This
means that the purchaser must make their own enquiries and
investigate the quality of the improvements on the property before
they enter into a contract to buy that property.
A vendor or seller of the property is not allowed to
deliberately hide defects or deceive the buyer by fraud but the
purchaser should undertake searches and inspections of the property
to discover any defects in the property. Failure to do this may
result in the buyer losing their deposit and being sued by the
seller for breach of contract, or the buyer can end up with a
property that needs expensive repairs.
