Contract of sale in South Australia: the Form 1 vendor's statement, the two-day cooling-off period, and what happens if it is wrong

Selling a house in South Australia runs in a different order from the eastern states. The buyer usually signs the contract first, on the agent's standard form. The seller then serves a Form 1, the vendor's statement, and the buyer's two-clear-business-day cooling-off period runs from the contract or from service of the Form 1, whichever is later. Until the Form 1 has been served and those two days have passed, a South Australian seller does not have a sale they can rely on.

This guide sets out what the Land and Business (Sale and Conveyancing) Act 1994 and the Land and Business (Sale and Conveyancing) Regulations 2025 actually require, in their own order: the Form 1 and its schedule, who prepares and certifies it, how and when it is served, the cooling-off period and its exceptions, the $100 deposit rule, and the buyer's remedies when the statement is missing or wrong. Then it covers the contract itself, costs, and the mistakes to avoid. The 2025 Regulations replaced the 2010 Regulations on 1 September 2025, so older summaries cite the wrong instrument. Figures are as at September 2026 and the sources are listed at the end.

The rule: a signed Form 1 at least ten clear days before settlement

Section 7(1) of the Act says a vendor of land must, "at least 10 clear days before the date of settlement, serve, or cause to be served, on the purchaser a statement in the form required by regulation (signed by the vendor)" setting out the buyer's cooling-off rights and the prescribed particulars of everything affecting the land. That statement is the Form 1, and its layout is fixed by Schedule 1 of the Regulations.

Two features distinguish it from Victoria's Section 32 and Queensland's disclosure statement. First, the legal deadline is tied to settlement, not to the buyer signing, so a Form 1 can lawfully be served after the contract. Second, because the cooling-off period does not start until the Form 1 is served, serving it late only delays the day the buyer is locked in. In practice the agent serves the Form 1 as soon as the seller has signed the contract, and a well-run campaign has it prepared before the first open inspection.

Section 7 applies to freehold land and Crown leasehold; it does not apply where land is sold as part of a business, which has its own Form 2.

What the Form 1 contains

Regulation 8 says the statement must comprise Parts A, B and C of Form 1 plus the applicable parts of its Schedule. In plain terms:

• Part A: parties and land. Buyer, seller, their agents, the date of the contract if it has already been made, and the title description.
• Part B: the buyer's cooling-off rights. The statutory explanation of the right to cool off, the exceptions, how and when the notice must be served, and what money comes back. This is where most buyers first read the rules quoted below.
• Part C: the vendor's statement. The seller, or a person authorised to act for the seller, signs that the Schedule contains all the particulars section 7(1) requires. The seller's signature is what makes it a Form 1.
• Part D: the agent's certificate. Where an agent is acting, the certificate under section 9 that the prescribed inquiries confirm the Schedule is complete and accurate, or is accurate subject to stated exceptions.
• Schedule, Division 1: mortgages, charges and prescribed encumbrances. A table of 36 headings, one for each Act that can create a charge or encumbrance over land: mortgages, easements, restrictive covenants, leases and tenancies, caveats and liens under the "General" heading, then Aboriginal heritage, human remains, Crown rates, conditions of old development approvals, emergency services levy, environment protection and site contamination orders, fencing notices, heritage listings, Housing Improvement Act orders and rent control, land acquisition notices, landscape levies and water notices, land tax, council notices and orders, road-widening restrictions, mining tenements, native vegetation agreements, planning matters under the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Act 2016, public health notices, water industry charges and a catch-all for other charges. Four sets of items must appear whether or not they apply: the general items for a mortgage, easement, restrictive covenant and lease or tenancy; the repealed-Development-Act condition item; the repealed-Act conditions item; and the two Planning, Development and Infrastructure Act items, which since 2021 carry the zone, subzone and overlays that apply to the land under the Planning and Design Code. Everything else is included only if it affects the land.
• Schedule, Division 2: other particulars. Details of any transaction by which the seller acquired the land within the previous 12 months, with the parties and the price; community-lot and strata-unit particulars (contributions and arrears, the corporation's assets and liabilities, expenditure resolved on, the last two years of minutes, the last accounts, current insurance, the by-laws or articles); building indemnity insurance still in force for building work on the land; the asbestos register where the property is a workplace; and whether the seller has been notified under the state's building cladding audit that the building has aluminium composite panels rated moderate, high or extreme risk and not yet remediated.
• Schedule, Division 3. For a community lot or strata unit, the prescribed notice explaining what buying into a corporation means: governance, use restrictions, whether you are buying a debt, expenses, guarantees and off-the-plan purchases.

Section 7(3) lets the seller leave out charges for rates and taxes imposed less than 12 months before service; those are adjusted at settlement instead. The Form 1 also carries, attached, the prescribed buyer's notice under section 13A, a two-page checklist headed Safety, Enjoyment and Value that prompts the buyer to ask about asbestos, salt damp, wiring, smoke alarms, pools, termites, stormwater and flooding, septic systems, power lines, strata obligations, unapproved additions and water connections. The same notice must be offered to every buyer who attends an inspection. It is a list of questions, not a set of answers: none of those matters is warranted in the Form 1.

Who prepares it, and the agent's certificate

Where the seller has an agent, section 9 puts the verification on the agent. The agent must ensure the prescribed inquiries in regulation 13 are made: ask the seller what affects the land, search the title, request and inspect the seller's documents for any mortgage, charge or encumbrance, ask the seller and the council about building indemnity insurance, and put the questions in Schedule 3 of the Regulations to each council, authority and body listed there. The agent then signs the Part D certificate, gives the seller a copy within 48 hours, and the seller must ensure the certificate is attached to the Form 1 when it is served. In practice the agent orders the searches through a search provider and a registered conveyancer often assembles the document; the certificate is the agent's regardless.

If the seller has no agent but the buyer does, the buyer's agent carries the same duty and serves the certificate on the buyer. If neither side has an agent, no certificate is required, but the seller still has to produce a complete and accurate Form 1 and faces the same consequences if it is wrong. A private seller should have a conveyancer prepare it.

How and when it is served

Section 17 and regulation 32 allow the Form 1, a notice of amendment and the agent's certificate to be served personally, by registered post, or by fax or email to an address the buyer has provided for the purpose. Emailed service is taken to occur at the time of transmission.

Section 10 requires the statement to be accurate on the date of service. If circumstances change between service and the buyer signing, so that a fresh statement would read differently, the Form 1 is treated as defective until a notice of amendment is served, and the amended statement is treated as served on the date of the amendment. The buyer's cooling-off clock restarts from that date.

At auction, section 11 requires the Form 1 to be available at the agent's or auctioneer's office for the three consecutive business days before the auction and at the auction venue for at least 30 minutes before it starts, with all reasonable steps taken to tell prospective buyers where and when they can read it.

The cooling-off period

Section 5 gives the buyer of land the right to rescind by written notice served before the "prescribed time". For land that is:

• if the Form 1 was served before the contract was made, the end of the second clear business day after the day the contract was made;
• if the Form 1 was served after the contract was made, the end of the second clear business day from the day the Form 1 was served;
• or settlement, if that comes first.

"Clear" business days exclude the day of service or contract, weekends and public holidays. Serve a Form 1 on a Thursday and the buyer has until the end of Monday. Part B of the Form 1 adds the corollary that matters most to sellers: if the Form 1 is not served at least two clear business days before settlement, the cooling-off notice may be served at any time before settlement.

The notice must be in writing and signed by the buyer. It can be handed to the seller, posted by registered post to the seller's last known address, faxed or emailed to a number or address the seller has provided, or left with or posted to the seller's agent at the agent's address for service. Posted, faxed and emailed notices count from the moment of posting or transmission, and section 5(3) puts the onus of proving service on the buyer, which is why Part B tells buyers to get a written acknowledgement.

On rescission the buyer gets back all money paid under the contract, except money paid for an option and a deposit of $100 or less (section 5(4)). There is no percentage penalty. And section 5(5) makes it an offence for a seller or stakeholder to demand more than a $100 deposit before the cooling-off period has run, which is why South Australian contracts provide for a $100 holding deposit at signing and the balance of the deposit, commonly up to 10%, once cooling-off has expired. Demanding more early is punishable under section 14 by a fine of up to $10,000.

Section 5(7) lists the sales where there is no cooling-off period:

• the property is sold at auction;
• it was offered at auction, passed in, and a person who bid, or on whose behalf a bid was made, signs a contract on the same day;
• the buyer, before signing, received independent advice from a lawyer who signed the prescribed certificate of independent advice (Form 3 Part A of the Regulations). That is how a buyer makes an unconditional offer;
• the buyer is a body corporate and the land is not residential land. Since 1 January 2014 a company buying a home does have cooling-off rights;
• the sale is by tender, or follows the exercise of an option, and the timing conditions in section 5(7)(e) and (f) are met: at least five clear business days after tenders closed or the option was granted, and at least two clear business days after the Form 1 was served; or
• the contract also sells a business that is not a small business.

The right cannot be excluded by contract; section 33 makes any attempt to do so void.

If the Form 1 is missing, late or wrong

Three consequences follow, and they stack.

• The cooling-off period never closes. Because the prescribed time is measured from service of a compliant Form 1, a statement that has not been served, or that is defective under section 10, leaves the buyer able to serve a cooling-off notice at any time before settlement and recover everything but $100. This is the practical remedy and the one buyers' conveyancers reach for.
• The court can unwind or compensate. Under section 15, where a Form 1 is not given or certified as required, or is defective, a buyer who has been prejudiced can apply to a court to avoid the contract and restore the parties to their starting positions, or for damages, or both. Damages can be awarded against the seller, against an agent whose failure to carry out section 9 caused the prejudice, or both. This is the route after settlement, when cooling off is no longer available.
• It is an offence. Section 14 makes any contravention of Part 2, including a late, unsigned or inaccurate Form 1 and a missing agent's certificate, an offence with a maximum penalty of $10,000. Section 16 provides defences: that the breach was unintentional and not negligent, that it came from reliance on information a council or authority was required to supply, or that the buyer, on a lawyer's certified advice, signed a waiver in the prescribed form.

The contract itself

The contract of sale is separate from the Form 1. Most South Australian homes are sold on the standard residential contract approved by the Real Estate Institute of South Australia, filled in by the agent; some practitioners use the Law Society of South Australia's contract instead. Offers made through an agent must be in writing on the prescribed Notice of Offer to Purchase Residential Land, which carries a warning that it is not a contract and may be withdrawn until a contract is signed, and must state the offeror's name, the land, the amount, any conditions such as finance, the sale of another property or a satisfactory building inspection, and the proposed settlement date (section 21 and regulation 19). The agent must pass every written offer to the seller within 48 hours and must not disclose one buyer's offer to another.

The contract binds both parties when the seller signs it, subject to the buyer's cooling-off right and any conditions. Finance, building inspection and subject-to-sale conditions are written as special conditions with their own dates; settlement is whatever the contract says, and 30 to 60 days is the usual range. Buyers are told in Part B to insure the property from the day they sign, and to make the settlement arrangements in time, because time is usually of the essence. Those are conventions and contract terms, not statutory rules, and the standard form should be read by your own conveyancer before you sign anything that departs from it.

What it costs

The statutory searches behind a Form 1 for a standard house usually run to $300 to $600, and the seller's conveyancing through to settlement to $800 to $2,500 in professional fees plus disbursements. Those are the ranges in our cost-of-selling tables. Community and strata particulars are charged by the corporation or its manager on top, and the conveyancing guide covers choosing a registered conveyancer, who handles most South Australian settlements, or a solicitor.

The mistakes that catch sellers out

• Treating the signed contract as a sale. Nothing is safe until the Form 1 has been served and two clear business days have passed. Keep the campaign warm until then.
• Serving the Form 1 late. Every day it is not served is a day the buyer can still walk away for $100. Have it ready before the first open inspection.
• Letting it go stale. A new council notice, a change in the strata levies, a caveat lodged by a lender: any change before the buyer signs makes the statement defective until a notice of amendment is served, and the amendment restarts the clock.
• Taking too much deposit too soon. More than $100 before the cooling-off period ends is an offence for the seller or the stakeholder. Let the contract split the deposit.
• Unapproved work. Conditions of development approval and any council order or notice must be disclosed in Division 1, and building indemnity insurance in Division 2. Tell your agent and conveyancer about everything built since you bought.
• Selling a unit without the corporation's paperwork. The minutes, accounts, insurance and by-laws take time to obtain. Apply to the corporation in writing the day you list; the form requires you to record the date you asked.
• Relying on a verbal offer. Offers through an agent must be in writing on the prescribed notice. A buyer's word at the open inspection is not something the agent can lawfully act on.

If you are the buyer: five things to check

1. Division 1, the four mandatory items. Any mortgage or caveat to be discharged, every easement and covenant, and any lease or tenancy that survives settlement.
2. The planning items. Zone, subzone and overlays under the Planning and Design Code, and any condition of an old approval that still binds the land. These decide what you can build.
3. Notices and orders. Council orders, Housing Improvement Act declarations, environment protection or site contamination orders, land acquisition or road-widening notices.
4. Community or strata particulars. Contributions and arrears, expenditure already resolved on, the last two years of minutes, and the insurance. Ask whether you are buying a debt.
5. What the Form 1 does not tell you. Structure, pests, salt damp, wiring, pool fencing and unapproved additions are on the buyer's checklist for a reason. Use the two clear business days, or make the contract conditional on a building inspection.

Our building and pest inspection guide and due diligence checklist cover what to order, and the South Australian stamp duty guide covers what the government will charge you.

Where this fits in the sale

The Form 1 is the document a South Australian sale turns on, and it has to be right before the buyer's clock can start. Our guide to how to sell a house in Australia covers the campaign end to end, auction versus private treaty covers which method suits your market, and the South Australian commission guide covers what an agent will charge. How the two-day period compares with the other states is in the cooling-off period by state guide. If you want an agent who sells in your suburb to give you a figure first, request a free appraisal. Selling interstate? See the equivalent guides for the NSW contract of sale, the Queensland contract of sale and the Victorian Section 32.

Sources

• Land and Business (Sale and Conveyancing) Act 1994 (SA), sections 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13A, 14, 15, 16, 17, 21 and 33, current version in force from 15 January 2026: legislation.sa.gov.au. Quotation is from section 7(1). The January 2026 amendment touched only section 6 (instalment contracts).
• Land and Business (Sale and Conveyancing) Regulations 2025 (SA), regulations 6, 8, 9, 13, 16, 19 and 32, Schedule 1 (Form 1 and its Schedule, Divisions 1 to 3) and Schedule 2 (prescribed notice to purchaser), in operation from 1 September 2025: legislation.sa.gov.au.
• Legal Services Commission of South Australia, Law Handbook: Form 1, cooling-off period and the contract (REISA and Law Society forms; 2021 additions of cladding and Planning and Design Code items).
• Consumer and Business Services SA, buying and selling property guidance: cbs.sa.gov.au.
• Preparation and search costs: the South Australian lines of our cost-of-selling data, sourced to the Law Handbook Form 1 page; ranges are typical fees, not quotes.