Ask most people how a property settles in Australia and they’ll describe something vaguely national. A contract, some waiting, a settlement date, keys handed over. Simple enough.
It isn’t. If you work in this area, you learn quickly that the gaps between the states matter. They decide who can legally act on a file, what they’re on the hook for, and who wears it when a deal goes sideways.
Here’s the thing worth remembering. Property law in Australia was never federalised. Each state and territory runs its own conveyancing regime, its own contract, its own licensing rules. What we call “settlement” in one jurisdiction looks structurally different in another, even though the end result, a transfer of legal title, is the same everywhere.
Who’s Actually Allowed to Act
Buy a place in Sydney or Melbourne and odds are a solicitor or a licensed conveyancer runs your settlement. That’s the version most people have in their heads.
Western Australia does it differently. There, settlements are managed by licensed settlement agents operating under the Settlement Agents Act 1981, a piece of legislation with no direct equivalent on the east coast. The agents are licensed, regulated, and hold statutory obligations that sit outside the solicitor framework entirely. So a firm of licensed settlement agents in Perth operates under a regulatory regime that a Sydney conveyancer would find genuinely unfamiliar.
And that gap isn’t cosmetic. It changes who carries the professional indemnity, how a complaint gets made, and which body a wronged client actually goes to.
The Electronic Layer on Top
Then came e-conveyancing, and it added a national layer over these state-based systems without erasing the differences underneath.
The Electronic Conveyancing National Law, adopted across the jurisdictions, gave platforms like PEXA their legal footing. It set the rules for electronic lodgment, digital signing, and the simultaneous transfer of funds and title. On the surface, this looks like harmonisation. One platform, one process, nationwide.
But the ECNL sits on top of state property law, it doesn’t replace it. A practitioner in WA using PEXA is still bound by the Settlement Agents Act. A Victorian conveyancer is still bound by Victorian licensing law. The workspace looks identical on screen. The legal obligations behind each subscriber are not.
Verification of Identity, and Why It Matters More Now
One obligation the electronic system made universal, and unavoidable, is verification of identity.
Before a practitioner acts in an electronic transaction, they have to take reasonable steps to confirm their client is who they say they are. Skip it, or do it poorly, and you’ve opened the door to the exact fraud the VOI standard was built to stop, someone selling or mortgaging a property they don’t own.
I’d argue this is the single biggest legal shift electronic settlement introduced. The old paper system had its own checks, but they were looser and slower. Now the standard is explicit, the audit trail is digital, and the consequences of getting it wrong are documented in black and white.
Where the Fraud Went
People assume digital settlement made fraud easier. Mostly, the opposite happened. Mandatory VOI, secure platforms, and a permanent digital record closed off several traditional attack routes.
What survived, and thrived, is payment redirection fraud. Criminals intercept email correspondence near settlement and swap in fraudulent bank details. The money moves, and it’s gone. The defence is unglamorous but effective, verify account details through an independent channel, never trust a change of details that arrives by email alone. Experienced firms treat this as basic hygiene now. Practitioners at Hartfield Conveyancing and others who handle high volumes have simply built the verification step into every transaction as standard.
What This Means for Practitioners
If you advise on property in more than one state, you can’t assume the rules travel with you. The contract’s different. The licensing’s different. The professional obligations attach differently depending on who’s acting and where.
The electronic system smoothed the mechanics. It didn’t erase the law underneath. And the practitioners who understand both layers, the national platform and the state framework it sits on, are the ones who stay out of trouble.
That’s not likely to change any time soon. Property remains a state matter, and the differences between jurisdictions are baked into more than a century of separate legal development. E-conveyancing is a very good coat of paint. The house underneath was built state by state, and it still is.
Contributed by the team at Hartfield Conveyancing, a licensed settlement agency operating in Perth, Western Australia under the Settlement Agents Act 1981.
