by Peter Mericka B.A., LL.B Real Estate Lawyer and Qualified Practising Conveyancer Victoria Lawyers Real Estate Consumers are starting to wake up! Finally the market has turned on an auctioneer, and refused to be manipulated. Although it was tucked away on page 5 of yesterday’s Sunday Herald-Sun newspaper (Sunday Herald-Sun p.5 4 March, 2007), this small article, titled “Auction booed”, indicates that consumers are growing tired of the artificial manipulation of the the real...
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by Peter Mericka B.A., LL.B Real Estate Lawyer and Qualified Practising Conveyancer Victoria Lawyers Real Estate “The real estate industry is a dishonest industry!” This simple statement will be regarded by some as a serious and unjustified attack on a powerful and well-established industry, and by others as a trite truism. In coming posts we will put the real estate industry under the microscope and examine it in a way that has never before been...
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A warning issued by the by the Law Society of New South Wales The Law Society of New South Wales has received advice from the Registrar General that LPI Sydney has again intercepted counterfeit Certificates of Title lodged with mortgage documentation. The counterfeit title is an accurate representation of the form used prior to the new form of Certificate introduced in January 2004. It is extremely difficult to identify the counterfeit without careful examination and...
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by Tim ODwyer M.A., LL.B Queensland Solicitor & Consumer Advocate watchdog@argonautlegal.com.au A recent court decision in New South Wales rings warning bells to all those asked to witness property documents. The law is familiar, the Court of Appeal judge remarked, with cases where someone forges a property owner’s signature on a mortgage, induces someone else to witness the forgery then borrows money on that security. “Often the forger has been the husband of an...
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SOLD! This review on a play about real estate agents is a must read. Perhaps the play could be made into an information video for real estate consumers. (Old Fitzroy Theatre, February 8 Until March 3) “SET in the competitive bearpit of an office for commission-hungry real estate agents, this new Australian play is less concerned with real estate than with the inner wellbeing of people caught in a world obsessed with the empirical...
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by Tim ODwyer M.A., LL.B Queensland Solicitor & Consumer Advocate watchdog@argonautlegal.com.au (An open letter to movie actors Paul and Linda Hogan) Dear Mr & Mrs Hogan, You don’t know me, although I’ve been a big fan of Paul’s since his television comedy days and I’ve long liked Linda’s movie work. Anyhow, I wanted to bring to your attention some interesting legal issues relating to the sale a few years back of your multi-million dollar...
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by Tim O’Dwyer M.A., LL.B Queensland Solicitor & Consumer Advocate watchdog@argonautlegal.com.au My friend and colleague Judy Teitzel died shortly before Christmas last year. She was only 45 years of age. Few lawyers would be as outraged on behalf of disadvantaged clients, as solicitor Judy once was, to accuse a government of “gutter tactics”. Even fewer would, as Judy once did, describe a Fair Trading Minister as the minister for “unfair trading”. No wonder, when...
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by Tim O’Dwyer M.A., LL.B Queensland Solicitor & Consumer Advocate watchdog@argonautlegal.com.au A while ago Australian Property Investor magazine reported on the fraudulent and illegal practices of “jacked” real estate contracts and secret “rebates” on sale prices. The ABC’s Four Corners programme has also exposed the same scams. At the very time the API edition was on newsagents’ shelves real estate agent, David Kelly, from Queensland’s Sunshine Coast appeared in the Maroochydore Magistrates court charged...
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by Peter Mericka B.A., LL.B Real Estate Lawyer and Qualified Practising Conveyancer Victoria Lawyers Real Estate When Skilled Conveyancing copied material from my website and presented it on its own website, it raised in my mind questions regarding honesty, integrity, trustworthiness, business ethics, and simple common-sense. I was stunned. A Google search had taken me to the website of Skilled Conveyancing, a conveyancing business operated by Dawn Lockhart in the Melbourne suburb of Wantirna....
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by Tim O’Dwyer M.A., LL.B Queensland Solicitor & Consumer Advocate watchdog@argonautlegal.com.au Solicitor Bruce Simpson is a mate of mine. His little one-man legal office is in Cooroy, just inland from Noosa on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. He does a fair bit of conveyancing and, as a result, does a fair bit of whinging at home to his wife Kathryn. Like the ever-supportive spouses of so many Queensland conveyancing solicitors, Kathryn has to hear over and over...
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