There is no cooling off period in Western Australia

Buyers who have bought in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane arrive in Perth carrying an assumption that costs people money here. They sign an offer expecting a few days to think it over, ring a builder, or let a partner walk through the place. In Western Australia those days do not exist.

Consumer Protection puts it in a single line: “Be mindful there is no mandatory ‘cooling off’ period for real estate contracts made in WA.”

What happens the moment your offer is accepted

The document you sign is the REIWA Offer and Acceptance, form 810. It is an offer while it sits with the seller. Once the seller signs it and that acceptance is communicated to you, it is a contract. Condition 2 of the form says acceptance is sufficiently communicated if the accepting party, their representative or their real estate agent gives verbal or written notification that the contract has been signed. A phone call does it.

From that moment you are bound by the whole document, including the twenty pages of general conditions it incorporates. There is no statutory window to withdraw, no percentage of the price you can forfeit to walk away, and nothing obliging the seller to release you.

Where the conditions in your contract come from

This is the part that surprises interstate buyers most. The conditions are not written by the agent and they are not written by the seller. The Joint Form of General Conditions for the Sale of Land is adopted jointly by the Law Society of Western Australia and the Real Estate Institute of Western Australia. The current edition is dated May 2022 and is read together with an annexure issued in August 2023, after paper duplicate certificates of title were abolished.

So the same twenty pages sit behind almost every residential sale in the state. A buyer in Maylands and a buyer in Mount Lawley are working from identical terms. What differs between two contracts is the schedule at the front, the finance clause, and whatever special conditions the parties negotiate. We have set out what those general conditions require of each side in plain language here, including penalty interest, key handover and default notices.

What buyers from the east coast are used to

In New South Wales a buyer gets five business days after contracts are exchanged, and can withdraw by forfeiting 0.25% of the purchase price, which the NSW Government puts at $250 for every $100,000. It does not apply if you buy at auction, or exchange contracts on the same day the property is passed in.

Most other states and territories have some version of that, at different lengths and different penalties. Western Australia and Tasmania are the two places with no statutory cooling off period at all. If you have bought interstate before, assume that whatever you are used to does not apply here, and check rather than guess.

What WA buyers use instead

Protection here comes from conditions written into the contract before it is signed, rather than from a right to withdraw afterwards. The common ones:

• Subject to finance. Condition 1 of the Offer and Acceptance. If the buyer does not obtain finance approval by the latest time and gives a non-approval notice to the seller or the seller agent, the contract comes to an end. If no date is filled in, the latest time is 4pm on the day falling 15 business days after the contract date.
• Subject to a building inspection, and separately a timber pest inspection. Neither is automatic. Both have to be written in.
• Subject to the sale of another property, with a time limit the seller will want kept short.
• A due diligence period, or a period to review the strata documents. This is the closest thing WA has to a cooling off period, and it only exists if you ask for it.

Every one of these has to be in the contract before you sign it. Asking for one afterwards is asking the seller for a favour.

You can also ask for a cooling off clause outright. Nothing stops a seller agreeing to one as a special condition. Very few do, because a seller comparing two offers will discount the one that lets the buyer walk away.

The one place WA does give a way out

Strata. Under the Strata Titles Act a seller has to give the buyer particular disclosure before the contract is signed, and where certain things change afterwards, or the disclosure was not given properly or in time, the buyer can have a right to avoid the contract. Arguments about whether that right exists go to the State Administrative Tribunal. The detail is in what a seller must disclose before a buyer signs.

If you are buying off the plan, ask your settlement agent or a lawyer what applies to your particular arrangement before you sign, because the position is different again.

What this means in practice

Do your thinking before you sign, not after. Three things follow from that.

Read the strata documents first, or have us get them for you. Every property we list goes to market with an information pack for exactly this reason, so a buyer can read the by-laws, the minutes, the budget and the levy position before making an offer.

Have your finance sorted and pick a date you can actually meet. The finance clause is your main way out, and a latest time you cannot realistically hit is not protection, it is a deadline you will miss.

Ring your settlement agent before you sign. A ten-minute call about a special condition costs nothing. The same call the day after acceptance is a much harder conversation.

It binds the seller as well

Sellers sometimes assume the opposite, that they can keep taking offers or change their mind if something better turns up. Once acceptance has been communicated they are as bound as the buyer. A seller who wants out is looking at the default provisions in clauses 23 and 24 of the general conditions, and at their own legal costs.

The short version

• There is no cooling off period for real estate contracts in Western Australia
• Your offer becomes a binding contract as soon as the seller signs and that acceptance is communicated to you, which can be by phone
• The conditions are a standard form adopted jointly by the Law Society of Western Australia and REIWA, so they are the same in almost every sale
• Interstate buyers should assume none of their own state’s rules apply here
• Protection comes from conditions written in before signing: finance, building inspection, timber pest, sale of another property, or a due diligence period
• Strata disclosure can give a buyer a right to avoid the contract, and those disputes go to the State Administrative Tribunal
• The seller is bound from the same moment you are

Thinking of buying a strata property in the inner-city corridor and want the documents before you sign rather than after? See what we put in our information pack, or call the office on 08 6385 6800.

This article is general information about how property contracts work in Western Australia. It is not legal advice. Your own contract may be varied by special conditions, and your settlement agent or lawyer can advise on your particular circumstances.