Key takeaways for sellers
- A warranty is a promise, not a description. It covers the title, the notices on the property and the approvals for what's on it. If one turns out wrong, the buyer has a remedy — and some warranties survive settlement.
- Warranties are given in the contract, so the time to fix a problem is before you sign. Once it's signed, you've made the promise.
- Disclosure and compliance sit alongside warranties. Your statutory disclosure — the Section 32 in Victoria, prescribed documents in New South Wales, the Form 2 in Queensland — and safety compliance for things like pool fences and smoke alarms are separate obligations, covered in their own explainers.
What is a warranty, exactly?
A promise, written into the contract or implied by law, that certain things about your property are true. Not an opinion, not your best guess. If it turns out to be wrong, the buyer has a remedy — and depending on the warranty, they may still have it after settlement.
What are you promising the buyer?
| Warranty | What you're saying | If it's wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Title and right to sell | You own it and you're able to sell it | The most serious kind of breach — the sale may not be able to complete |
| Encumbrances and notices | Nothing is registered against the property or issued by an authority that you haven't disclosed | Compensation, or the buyer walks |
| Building and works | Structures on the property have the approvals they should have | Compensation, or the buyer walks |
| Outgoings | Rates, water and levies are paid up to date | Usually sorted through the settlement adjustments |
The pattern: you're warranting the legal state of the property, not its condition.
What don't you warrant?
Quality. You are not warranting that the house is well built, well maintained, or free of problems.
That's what building and pest inspections are for, and the buyer is expected to engage licensed inspectors to do them properly. You're a person who has been living in a house. You're not a building surveyor, and you're not expected to have surveyed your own home before selling it. A defect you knew nothing about is not a warranty you've broken.
The two sit together like this: on the narrow set of things you do warrant, the standard is strict — a notice you never knew about is still a notice. On everything outside that set, it isn't your problem to have found.
Where it changes is if you knew. Concealing a known problem stops being a warranty question and becomes a disclosure one — see what you must disclose when selling.
What do you have to do before settlement?
Keep the place as it was. You're required to hand over the property in the condition it was in when the contract was signed, fair wear and tear aside. That means the dishwasher that worked then should work at handover, and the garden shouldn't have died. This is what pre-settlement inspections are for, and it's a common source of last-minute argument.
Meet the condition dates. Anything the contract requires of you, by the date it requires it.
Answer requisitions, if you're in NSW or Victoria. Requisitions are formal written questions from the buyer's conveyancer about the title — standard practice, not a sign of trouble, and your conveyancer handles the replies. The Queensland standard contract doesn't allow them at all, so a Queensland seller won't get any.
Discharge your mortgage. Your bank has to release its mortgage before title can transfer. Start early; banks are the slowest part of this stage.
Provide vacant possession. Unless the contract says otherwise, the property has to be empty at settlement — no tenants, no furniture you meant to collect later, nothing in the shed.
That last one matters if the property is tenanted. A fixed-term lease doesn't end because you sold the house — it runs on, and the buyer takes it over. So either the contract is for sale with the tenant in place, or vacant possession has to be genuinely achievable by settlement.
This isn't something you can leave until later, either. Your disclosure document deals with it directly — the Section 32 in Victoria and the Form 2 in Queensland both require the tenancy details up front. The lease terms are on the table before the buyer signs, which is exactly where they should be.
Why is a wrong warranty worse than it sounds?
Most problems in a sale surface before settlement, get argued about, and get resolved. Warranties don't always work that way.
Some of them survive settlement. The buyer has moved in, your money has cleared, and they can still come back at you over something you warranted months earlier. That's why “it'll probably be fine” is an expensive position on a warranty question.
The risk runs roughly in this order: a price adjustment or compensation claim, then the buyer rescinding before settlement, then a claim that lands after settlement when you thought the whole thing was behind you.
Where does a conveyancer come in?
Warranties are given in the contract, which means the time to deal with them is before you sign. Your conveyancer works out what you're being asked to promise, checks it against the title and the property, and puts a special condition in place where something can't be warranted cleanly.
Zettle does that as part of preparing your contract, on a fixed fee known before you start. Just Zettle it.