Settlement: what happens after you buy with a buyer's agent

The public story of a purchase ends when the offer is accepted or the hammer falls. The actual story ends on settlement day, when the price is paid, the transfer is lodged, and someone hands you keys that work. In between sits a stretch of weeks that buyers treat as a holiday and professionals treat as a file. A licensed buyer's agent who stays on that file is doing the unglamorous half of the job. A buyer's agent who sends a bottle of wine and a branded esky has finished the half they like.

This article walks through that stretch: what happens after you buy, who owns which task, and where a buyer's agent is useful without pretending to be a conveyancer. It belongs in our buying process hub, after auction and negotiation, and before you start hanging pictures. It is general information for Australian readers, not legal advice. The contract you signed is the timetable.

Exchange is a legal event. Settlement is a different one.

On a private treaty file you usually exchange contracts when the offer is accepted, perhaps after a round of conditions. On an auction file you usually sign immediately after the hammer. In both cases you have, in broad terms, agreed to buy. The difference that still matters is cooling-off. Auctions generally have none. Private treaty often does, and the length varies by state — New South Wales commonly five business days, Victoria commonly three clear business days, other jurisdictions doing something else, including no statutory cooling-off at all. Confirm the current rule. If you are still inside a cooling-off window, settlement is not the topic. Whether you proceed is the topic.

Once you are bound, the contract names a settlement date. Thirty to ninety days is a familiar band in residential work, but it is not a law. It is a date someone negotiated. A vendor who has already bought may want it short. A buyer who has not sold may want it long. A buyer's agent should have treated that date as part of the price, not as a footnote. If the date was a surprise, the negotiation was incomplete.

A deposit is paid on the contract's terms, often to a trust account. The rest of the money arrives at settlement, usually from a lender, sometimes from you, occasionally from a mix that makes the broker earn their fee. None of this is the buyer's agent's money. Their own fee — the engagement fee, the success fee, GST inclusive, due when the authority says it is due — is a separate invoice. Read it. The fees hub is the map. Do not discover, at settlement, that a success fee is still payable on a house you found yourself because the clause was fog. That fight belongs in the authority, and it belongs in week one. See red flags.

Who does what, if everyone is doing their job

Your solicitor or conveyancer owns the legal work: reviewing the contract (ideally before you were bound), raising requisitions, checking title, calculating adjustments for rates and water, preparing the transfer, booking settlement, and dealing with the other side's lawyer. In some states electronic conveyancing platforms do the heavy lifting. The human still has to push the buttons and notice when a special condition is about to explode.

Your lender and broker own the money: valuation, formal approval, the mortgage documents, and the appearance of cleared funds on the day. A delay here is a common way a tidy file becomes a penalty conversation.

Your building and pest inspector has, if you hired one, already reported. Those inspections are the buyer's choice and strongly advisable, and they belong before auction and preferably before you rely on cooling-off as a plan. Settlement is the wrong moment to discover rising damp. A final inspection, which is a different and shorter visit, is there to check that the house is still the house — inclusions present, no new hole in the ceiling, tenants gone if they were meant to be gone. It is not a second pest report.

The buyer's agent coordinates. That word is doing a lot of work. On a good file it means they chase the selling agent when access for the final inspection is being delayed, they make sure the inspector's list was sent to the conveyancer, they notice that the settlement date collides with a public holiday, they keep you from ringing six people with the same question, and they attend the final walk-through if you cannot. On a bad file it means they forward emails and call it advocacy.

They are not a valuer, not a lawyer, not a lender, and not an inspector. The guides hub spells out that boundary. Hire them for the boundary they actually occupy.

The weeks in the middle

The middle of a settlement is mostly waiting punctuated by sharp tasks. Insurance is one. Many advisers will tell you to take out building insurance from exchange, because risk can pass before you have the keys. Ask your conveyancer and insurer; do not take a journal's word for the timing. If you are moving interstate, removalists book themselves on their own calendar, which is why a date that "should be about six weeks" is a poor brief.

Tenancies complicate the middle. An investment with a tenant in place settles as a going concern in a different emotional register from an owner-occupier who needs vacant possession. The contract should already have said which one you bought. If it did not, someone failed you at offer stage.

Defects that were in the building report do not magically become the vendor's problem because you have had time to reread the PDF. Unless the contract said they would be fixed, they are usually your problem, priced in or not. A buyer's agent who promised, in week one, that "we will get them to fix the roof before settlement" needs to have put that in a special condition. A conversation is not a condition.

Off-market purchases follow the same physics. The absence of a public campaign does not shorten title searches or lender valuations. See off-market properties.

Final inspection, settlement day, and the hour after

Book the final inspection close enough to settlement that the house cannot be quietly emptied, and far enough out that a problem can still be raised. Your buyer's agent should be good at this diary, and should know the difference between a missing dishwasher that was an inclusion and a scuff mark that will not delay a bank. Photograph what you need to photograph. Raise what the contract lets you raise. Then decide, with the conveyancer, whether you are settling, withholding, or having a harder conversation.

Settlement day itself is often undramatic: an electronic workspace, a handful of adjustments, a confirmation that funds moved. Sometimes it is a delay. Sometimes it is a penalty interest clause nobody read when they were in love with the light. A buyer's agent cannot make a lender faster. They can keep you informed, keep the selling agent honest about access, and stop a small delay becoming a story about your character.

Keys are released when the contract and the custom of the state say they are released — typically after settlement is confirmed, not when you are standing in the driveway at 9am with a kettle. If you need same-day access, that is another special condition you either did or did not buy.

Then the agent's work, if the authority was honest, ends. You should receive a file: reports, correspondence, the limit you agreed, the offers you made. You should receive an invoice that matches the authority. You should not receive a pitch to list the property with their "selling partners" as if that were a thank-you. Exclusive buyer agents should not take vendor commission on the same deal; they should also not treat your purchase as a listing lead unless you asked.

How to set this up on the day you hire

Settlement goes well when the brief in week one named the people. Conveyancer already instructed. Broker already matching the ceiling. Inspector already on a shortlist. Agent licensed on the public register in the state where the property sits — every state and territory keeps one. REBAA membership is a professional association signal, not a regulator and not a settlement instruction.

Ask, before you sign the authority, whether settlement support is included or whether the firm treats the hammer as the finish line. Ask what happens if settlement is delayed by your lender, by the vendor, or by you. Ask who attends the final inspection if you are in another city. Those answers are more useful than a promise that the agent has "great contacts".

If the purchase is simple, the campaign was quiet, and you already have a conveyancer who answers the phone, you may not need a buyer's agent for this stretch at all. Read when you do not need one. Paying for coordination you can do yourself is a choice, not a moral failing.

The short version

After you buy, the contract runs until settlement: deposit, searches, finance, adjustments, final inspection, money, keys. A buyer's agent coordinates and should stay on the file. They do not replace the conveyancer, the lender or the inspector. Building and pest belong earlier. Cooling-off, where it exists, belongs earlier still. The authority should already have said what the success fee covers, including the ugly case where you found the house yourself. Hire the person who treats settlement as part of the job, because it is the part where the house actually changes hands.