NSW Property Dispute - Unconditional Offer and Contract of Sale?

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MaxiG

Member
2 September 2015
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Hi all! Thanks for taking the time to read this thread.

We were involved in a commercial property development and shortly after the property was completed became involved in a dispute with the two other owners of the property. To cut a long story short after many, many months of negotiation through lawyers, we received an unconditional offer through their lawyer to purchase our share in the property. Under advice from our lawyer we accepted the offer without condition.

Our lawyer then proceeded to draft a contract of sale (as we are the selling party) and forwarded this to the opposing lawyer. After a few back and forwards negotiating the terms of the contract we have not heard anything back from the other parties. Our lawyer has contacted the opposing lawyer basically every day to attempt to get an update by there is no response.

Our lawyer's advice was to accept the unconditional offer as this binds the parties. They then said that if the other party rescinded the offer or unfairly contested the terms of our contract (which has been deliberately made to be standard in its terms) then we would have grounds to pursue the enforcement of the sale by the courts.

Does anyone have any experience with this? To me, it all seemed too easy to accept the offer and that this would bind the parties without either party signing a contract or paying a deposit.

Thanks for your help!
 
S

Sophea

Guest
Hi MaxiG,

Your lawyer is correct. When an offer is accepted a contract is made, even if a written agreement hasn't been signed so you would likely have grounds to enforce the sale.