Vendor disclosure 1

For over twenty years sellers of real estate have had to give a lot of information. If you want to sell your house you need to have a complete (if draft) contract ready so purchasers can look at it. If you want to sell industrial or commercial property you need to give the purchaser the information before the contract is exchanged (which is when the contract becomes binding).
Probably the most important information the vendor has to give is what most people know as the zoning certificate – but it really gives a lot more information than just the zoning. For example it tells you if the council wants to widen the road next to the property , whether the land is affected by mine subsidence, by bush fires (which as you may have seen on the news doesn’t just affect houses in forested areas) or by land slip.
One of the locally important pieces of information it gives is if the land is flood affected and if so to what extent. So for example in the northern part Branxton and in Central Maitland the certificate will tell you that the land was within the 100 year flood area (which is generally thought of as being the area inundated in the 1956 flood). In parts of Central Maitland the certificate goes further and tells you that you can’t build a new house on the land –that zoning is because the land is believed is even more likely to be flooded or a house on it is more likely to be damaged in a major flood The difference in Maitland can be seen between the railway end of Church St (which was within the 100 year flood and was affected by the 1955 flood but where you can build a house) and Horseshoe Bend where you cant build a house (much of that area was also affected by other floods).
One problem is that the certificate can only tell you what the council knows. So again for example the certificates didn’t tell you that much of newcastle was subject to earthquakes before 1989. Now they do.
Another problem is that the certificates don’t tell you about adjoining land. So –to take an example from a recent court case- the purchasers wanted to buy a house in Pymble in Sydney. The certificate disclosed that the state government had a Planning Policy which over rode local council powers (we have them in the area too- so for example the Bengalla mine near Muswellbrook and the Sweetwater development near Branxton was approved by the State government over the council’s objections). It didn’t say that the adjoining block was affected by this state policy and that that adjoining block had been selected for medium density housing.
Often – perhaps usually –what is going to happen next door may not matter but sometimes it does. And so the state government should change the zoning certificates (it determines the information that is to be provided in them) so that first it notifies council of its decisions in advance (according to the Mercury Cessnock Council wasn’t notified of the Sweetwater approval) and second those decisions are included in zoning certificates.