The Death of the Title Deed
by Sarah Rayner | Sep 18, 2021
Over the past few years, The NSW Property Law system has been progressively moving towards a system in which land dealings are being lodged electronically. The electronic system is known as eConveyancing.
Recently, the Office of the Register General has announced the date in which NSW will become a 100% electronic system.
This date is being referred to as the Cessation Date.
The Cessation date of 11 October 2021 brings with it a multitude of changes.
One of the bigger changes to the system is the abolition of the Certificate of Title (CT), or more commonly known as the title deed. The Real Property Amendment (Certificates of Title) Act 2021 now dictates that CTs will no longer be issued when completing a property transaction and further still all CTs in existence will be cancelled.
This will mean that a CT will no longer be a legal document.
However, current advice is that you shouldn't immediately run to the shredder to destroy any CT you have lying around your house, but that you should retain these Certificates for at least six (6) months after the Cessation date.
The NSW Torrens Title Register will remain the sole way of proving Legal ownership of Property in NSW.
In place of a CT being issued, the NSW Land Registry Service will be issuing an Information Notice.
The Information Notice is said to contain details of the Land affected, the dealing registration number, the date of the dealing and other important information.
With these changes, you can expect that your legal representative will now be required to carry out exhaustive identification checks before they will be able to proceed with your transaction.
For all your property transactions contact Everingham Solomons because Helping You is Our Business.