Reading a rural contract of sale

A rural contract is a list of assets wearing a land-sale costume. If you read only the front page — parties, price, lot and plan — you have not read the deal.

This post is a dated explainer beside the evergreen buying and selling guides. It is not a precedent. State law societies and conveyancing forms change. Use the form your practitioner puts in front of you.

The schedules that do the work

On a competent rural file you should find, or you should ask for:

• a plant and fixture list with serials where they matter
• a livestock list if animals are included
• water products named as the register names them
• GST treatment, including any going-concern conditions
• what happens to deposit, cooling-off and settlement if a transfer is refused

Water licences explains why “together with water” is not a name. The due diligence checklist is the search list that should already have run before you sign, or before you bid at an auction with no cooling-off.

Auction culture

Many farm auctions use contracts that exclude cooling-off. Consumer explainers from NSW Fair Trading and Consumer Affairs Victoria describe residential settings that may not match your document. Read the document.

What this post will not do

We will not paste a special-condition template. Templates go stale and get copied into the wrong state. We will not tell you a “market” deposit percentage. Ask the practitioner on the file.

If a buyers advocate is in the mix, they still do not replace this reading step — what is a property buyers agent?.