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In Western Australia, settlements are now done electronically as standard, taking over from a paper process that had been used for over 100 years. The documents are prepared, the transaction settles and the documents are lodged with the land registry electronically, through a network whose rules each state’s Registrar sets from a national model.
General information, not legal advice. For your own settlement, Landgate’s electronic conveyancing pages and ARNECC’s site are the official places to check.
National electronic conveyancing covers three things: preparing land registry documents in electronic form, settling property transactions electronically, and lodging the documents with the land registry electronically. In practice, the people acting for each side meet in one place online.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Electronic Lodgment Network (ELN) | A network set up to create registry documents and lodge them electronically with a state’s land registry. |
| ELN Operator (ELNO) | The legal entity a state or territory authorises to operate an ELN there. |
| Subscriber | A legal entity that is registered to complete conveyancing transactions through an ELN, either for itself or on behalf of a party to the transaction. |
| Client Authorisation | A prescribed form of authority that a Subscriber obtains from the party it represents, set out in the Model Participation Rules. |
| Verification of Identity | The steps taken to verify the identity of a party to the transaction. |
| Participation Rules | The rules Subscribers follow in a state, set by that state’s Registrar and based on ARNECC’s Model Participation Rules. |
ARNECC, the Australian Registrars’ National Electronic Conveyancing Council, is the body set up to help implement and manage the regulatory framework for electronic conveyancing. It was formed under an intergovernmental agreement between the states and territories, and its members are their land titles registrars. For Western Australia that is the Registrar of Titles, or another officer of the land registry nominated by Landgate’s chief executive.
The Electronic Conveyancing National Law is put into effect by separate legislation in each state and territory. In WA it is the Electronic Conveyancing Act 2014, proclaimed on 3 June 2014. Landgate publishes the WA Participation Rules, which Subscribers must follow, and the WA Operating Requirements for network operators, and it runs compliance checks on Subscribers.
Landgate says it is mandatory to lodge an eligible transfer, mortgage, discharge of mortgage, caveat or withdrawal of caveat electronically, under the Transfer of Land Regulations 2004. An industry professional who is not a Subscriber either subscribes to a network or engages a Subscriber to lodge for them.
There is an exception that matters to a buyer or seller acting alone. Asked whether self-represented parties can still lodge transfers on paper, Landgate’s answer is yes. A transfer that is not eligible for electronic lodgement, such as one not preceded by a written contract or agreement, can also continue on paper.
RevenueWA’s page on eConveyancing says registered Online Duties clients can use a network to settle certain self-assessed transactions with the assessed transfer duty paid at settlement into the trust account linked to them. A verification service checks that the transaction details entered for the settlement match those entered with RevenueWA. What duty is and who pays it is in Transfer duty in WA.
Two things reach the person buying or selling. The first is the Client Authorisation, the form of authority their representative must obtain to act for them in the network. The second is a check of identity. Landgate describes its verification of identity practice as designed to reduce the opportunity for land title fraud through identity theft or other improper dealings.
Subscribers must keep the evidence supporting an electronic conveyancing transaction for at least seven years under the WA Participation Rules.
Consumer Protection warns about the “man in the middle” scam: electronic messages are used to arrange a bank transfer that the sender believes is going to the right place, but the money is paid into the offenders’ account. Its guidance for settlement agents includes confirming any change in a client’s contact details by writing to both the original and the new contact points.
For sellers, it puts another warning simply: in a property sale, a seller should never need to spend money on the buyer’s behalf.
Landgate’s TitleWatch is a subscription service that emails the subscriber when it detects an action on a Certificate of Title, such as a change of ownership details, mortgages, leases or caveats. The check runs twice a day, at 12 noon and 4pm.
This is a guide published by Dotto. Dotto is not a settlement agent or conveyancer. Dotto holds no settlement agent or conveyancer licence, does not act for buyers or sellers, and does not refer anyone to a settlement agent or conveyancer. This is general information, not advice. It explains property settlement in Western Australia from the side of the buyer or the seller, and it names no settlement agency or law firm. Where this guide and a source differ, the source is right.